Fear the birds

It's coming.\nOh, you know it's coming. It's been coming for a long time. \nBird flu. H5N1. Epidemic. Chaos. Riots in the streets.\nHuman sacrifice, cats and dogs living together -- mass hysteria.\nHow are those chicken McNuggets tasting?\nIt's in France. It started off in China, and now it's in France. That's just, what, 1,500 miles from New Jersey? And you know sooner or later, some jerk's going to smuggle a chicken into Brazil, and bam -- it's crossed the ocean.\nAnd then we're all screwed. Because of Murphy's law, it'll mutate. We'll all have to move into camps in northern Manitoba, into the barren wastes, to escape its spread. Only the strong will survive; we'll revert to a token-based society, as our old world will be made uninhabitable. Someone will take the position Tina Turner had in "Beyond Thunderdome," and we'll either fall in line under her glorious new despotism or live in fear. \nBut come on, now. This is the 21st century. We're on top of this. I mean, this is what we elect leaders for, right?\n"The world is woefully unprepared." That's Mike Leavitt, U.S. Secretary of Health. Wow, thanks a lot, killjoy.\nBut he's not kidding, either. It's shown up in Nigeria, Africa's most populated nation. H5N1 is expected to jump borders to the myriad of different dirt-poor countries of central Africa, many of which lack the infrastructure to combat a possible outbreak. \nIn Vietnam, where there have been nearly 100 cases of humans contracting the disease, officials believe that the locals are underreporting its occurrence. Villagers in India, which recently had an outbreak in the rural province of Navapur, have resisted culling their poultry despite government compensation. Thing is, the authorities are only paying about half of what the market price normally would bare, and the birds are a lot of peoples' source of income. \nDudes, come on. Just pay the extra couple of dollars for the chickens.\nNot only is the world "woefully unprepared," it's also not taking this very seriously.\nTo put it in perspective, the last time the world had a major flu pandemic on its hands was 1918, and 500,000 died in the United States. More than 40 million people died worldwide.\nThat trounces World War I's death count. \nTrue, global conflict and probably a relative lack of media attention contributed to that pandemic, but it does make you wonder. A best-case scenario of human outbreak (according to an Australian think-tank) has global deaths at 1.4 million. Worst-case scenario is 142 million. And that's like Armageddon, man.\nSo what do we do? Well, I don't know about "us," but "I'm" going to panic. \nI've started to dig a hole in my apartment's living room floor; it's where my airtight bunker's eventually going to go. I guess the rest of you should write your congressman, and tell him to start paying attention. Because its spread is inevitable, and not everyone has the incredible foresight I do. Good luck, world.