Everyone Needs to Calm Down

OK, everyone repeat after me please:

I don't have swine flu and I'm not going to die.

There. Doesn't that feel better? You know it does and you know its true, so enough of the fucking hand wringing. Furthermore, put those god damned masks away. The only thing you can accomplish with them is looking like a paranoid loon.

As I write this, the CDC officially recognizes 109 cases, with 1 death in the United States. One death...out of three hundred million people.

Mexico, of course, seems to be hit worse, but again, lets get real for a minute. That timeshare your spendthrift Aunt bought in Cancun isn't Mexico. Most of Mexico is poor and undeveloped, without adequate infrastructure. Even here though, only 12 deaths can be confirmed. The population of Mexico is around 110,000,000.

So there you go, a one in three hundred million chance of dying from swine flu in the US, or an elevated risk of somewhere around one in nine million chance of dying in Mexico. Among those things far more likely to kill you than swine flu, according to LiveScience, are a dog attack (1 in 147,100), an asteroid impact (1 in 200,000), and a fireworks discharge (1 in 615,488). So quit worrying about the flu and start giving your dog a second look...