El Gordo

‘This is it - the pig one!’
In Mexico - where the outbreak began - there are now 26 confirmed cases. Some reports say as many as 149 people may have died from swine flu, but WHO officials put the figure much lower and said only about 20 of the deaths could be definitely attributed to swine flu.

The thing with diseases is not that people die of them, but how many die out of those who catch it. With SARS the death rate is about 10%: roughly ten or twelve people will die for every hundred who get infected. That’s very high. People are right to be worried about SARS, but it’s not in quite the same league as The Black Death, which slashed Europe’s population by a third in the late fourteenth century. If you caught that one, it was pretty much curtains for you, really. Once you started sneezing it was all over bar the buboes.
So what concerned me was the death rate. It’s really impossible to judge from such a small number of cases, but I guess that is rather worrying if twenty out of twenty-six have succumbed. That’s a seventy-seven percent death rate, which would mean you would have less than a one-in-four chance if you came down with it. Now that’s well into the Black Death kill ratio.
Mind you, if - as the report appears to suggest - one hundred and forty nine people have died out of only twenty-six infected... then we are dealing with a disease of terrifying potency, one that kills through the power of suggestion. In that case, the thing we should most fear is fear itself.
Actually, a bizarre hysterical illness known as Grisi Siknis has been reported just lately in Mexico’s near neighbour, Nicaragua;

"Grisi Siknis turns people into witches and they go crazy," [said traditional healer Doña Porcela]. Last year there were 65 cases of Grisi Siknis, which translates from the local Miskito language as ’crazy sickness’. It behaves like a virus, sending teenager after teenager into a frenzied state followed by long periods of coma-like unconsciousness...

Of course, some uncharitable souls may suggest that sounds like normal teenage behaviour anyway, but I can’t help wondering if this is more than just a coincidence. During both World Wars, army doctors noted many cases of hysterical syphilis, as shell-shocked soldiers believed they were dying, and exhibited very real symptoms, yet showed no trace of infection. In our fevered climate of crisis and anxiety, I would not be surprised to see more casualties from imagined illness than the real thing. I expect to see London anonymised behind face masks by the end of the week.

Crash

I could not help wondering if fate had played a hand in making the headlines on today’s BBC news page an unintended tribute to J.G. Ballard:

Titan prisons plans 'abandoned'

Dissidents issue SF death threat

Body parts pair still questioned

Of course, I am disappointed to learn that Saturn’s largest moon will not now become the new Botany Bay after all, that the British Interplanetary Society will never witness a fresh generation of Tolpuddle Martyrs blasting off for cells with a view of the ethane sea. Mind you, that Science-Fiction death threat sounds fearful indeed. A laser from space? Flying saucers?
I suspect Ballard would have appreciated the Evening Standard headline from Budget Day too - “Drink and Fuel Up!” I take it to be read as an instruction to binge drinkers to derive their energy from booze. It reminded me of the locals’ reaction to explorer Brigadier Blashford-Snell and his party going off-road in the bush: ‘They poured some of the firewater into their engines, and then the rest into themselves, and then they left.’ That’s the spirit. Get charged up.

Happy Easter

I have been silent for a while, it’s true, and questions have been asked. The fact is, I have had nothing much to say and if I don't have much to say, then I don’t say anything. I have had a lot to think about, but very little worth repeating. There has also been illness on the radar and it’s taken time to break. I shall resurface, rest assured.
Of course, this blog has become infected itself, with hate-filled ‘Believers’, and I thought it best to give them time to get bored and drift away. They will not intimidate me, you may be pleased to hear. You see, one product of my new thinking is that the religions are not the problem. I used to think, as Dr Dawkins, that if only people could be cured of their extreme beliefs and superstitions then they could get on with their lives in peace with the rest of us. I now understand that the beliefs are not at fault. Oh, certainly, a lot of them are pernicious and vile, but some also have the noble and good tucked into the folds of the bad. They do not deserve our hate. They are no more than a fig-leaves: fig-leaves the believers hold to cover up that which truly shames them. They hope we will all focus on the leaf and not on the shrimpy member that lies beneath.
So, I am no longer going to laugh at their fig-leaves... I am going to start laughing at the things they hide. Those are much funnier!
In the meantime, in fresh (near) health, I intend to hate the sin, but love the sinner - and the first on that list is my own self.