No charge.
Events are predicted in order of occurrence, with numbers reversed because I'm a bit of a weirdo.
10. Health care reform will pass, without a public health insurance option, but with a mechanism to activate government insurance if certain conditions are met.
9. You or your significant other or one of your siblings will get H1N1. You/He/She will spend a day in bed then be fine.
8. The Seahawks will finish the year 8-8, "tied" with the 49ers atop the NFC West, except San Fran will win the division lamely on a tie-breaker.
7. A major cell phone provider will fail and be gobbled up by a competitor by early 2011. (I'm looking right at you, Sprint. And glancing sideways at you, T-Mobile. And wishing it were you, Verizon. Bite me, at&t.)
6. The Dow Jones will reach and surpass its former closing-bell peak of 14,164.53 sometime in the fall of 2011.
5. The Mariners will reach the 2011 World Series. No further details provided at this time.
4. Barack Hussein Obama will coast to re-election as President of the United States of America. Coast, I tell you. Reverse Reagan '84 style.
3. The Republican Party will split in half sometime in or after 2013. A chain reaction will ensue, culminating in the split of the Democratic Party and the emergence of the Green Party as a non-negligible political force. Five parties are in our future. Don't try and stop it.
2. A major terrorist attack on par with or exceeding the carnage of 9/11 will take place on American soil in the teen years of this century. Tragically, we may have to get used to one of these per decade, as our government continues to do nowhere near enough to stem the tide of anti-Americanism.
1. Some time after 2030, retired government officials, prominent scholars and brilliant political scientists will converge on Philadelphia for a Constitutional Convention during which they will update the Constitution to ensure its survival in an age quite different than 1787.
Showing posts with label swine flu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swine flu. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Days of Swine and (Runny) Noses / 9-10-09
Oooo! The swine flu!!
Run away!!!
H1N1 will infect plenty of us this winter. It will kill some of us. Just like the regular flu does every year.
That's because it IS a regular flu, complete with - brace yourself, a terrifying revelation awaits - flu-like symptoms. It has some peculiar characteristics, like how it tends to targets young people instead of old. It's going to reach a pandemic stage. It will spread like crazy. You or someone you know WILL get it this fall or winter. Oh, did I forget to mention: It also causes little squiggly piggy tails to sprout from your forehead.
All right, so it's not exactly Ebola. Although the next wave of deaths, coupled with a certain shortage of H1N1 vaccine, will test that theory in the media. I hate to sound so callous, but I just can't get worked up about it and it annoys me heavily that reporters do. I guess it just doesn't rise to the level of news I'd drop everything to watch. It will be costly, in terms of lost productivity in the workplace, but otherwise... pfff.
Still, the kids will be washing their hands and covering their coughs with a passion this fall. I'm such a paranoid hypocrite.
(Is this post's title too obscure of a joke? Just curious.)
Run away!!!
H1N1 will infect plenty of us this winter. It will kill some of us. Just like the regular flu does every year.
That's because it IS a regular flu, complete with - brace yourself, a terrifying revelation awaits - flu-like symptoms. It has some peculiar characteristics, like how it tends to targets young people instead of old. It's going to reach a pandemic stage. It will spread like crazy. You or someone you know WILL get it this fall or winter. Oh, did I forget to mention: It also causes little squiggly piggy tails to sprout from your forehead.
All right, so it's not exactly Ebola. Although the next wave of deaths, coupled with a certain shortage of H1N1 vaccine, will test that theory in the media. I hate to sound so callous, but I just can't get worked up about it and it annoys me heavily that reporters do. I guess it just doesn't rise to the level of news I'd drop everything to watch. It will be costly, in terms of lost productivity in the workplace, but otherwise... pfff.
Still, the kids will be washing their hands and covering their coughs with a passion this fall. I'm such a paranoid hypocrite.
(Is this post's title too obscure of a joke? Just curious.)
Monday, May 4, 2009
Swine Song / 5-4-09
It's like I said yesterday.
Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano at a press conference on Monday: "We have started to see encouraging signs that this virus may be mild, and its spread may be limited." And also: "What the epidemiologists are seeing now with this particular strain...is that the severity of the disease, the severity of the flu -- how sick you get -- is not stronger than regular seasonal flu."
Someone should tell CNN.
To be fair (but not balanced), Napolitano and others offered the caveat that a mutated H1N1 may return in the fall to wreak additional havoc. With the headlines, at least.
Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano at a press conference on Monday: "We have started to see encouraging signs that this virus may be mild, and its spread may be limited." And also: "What the epidemiologists are seeing now with this particular strain...is that the severity of the disease, the severity of the flu -- how sick you get -- is not stronger than regular seasonal flu."
Someone should tell CNN.
To be fair (but not balanced), Napolitano and others offered the caveat that a mutated H1N1 may return in the fall to wreak additional havoc. With the headlines, at least.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Fight H1N1 hysteria... what, with facts? / 5-3-09
Don't think of me as the guy who glosses over the so-called danger of swine flu, or the death it has caused.
But do think of me as the facts guy on H1N1.
U.S. Deaths from swine flu, 2009: 1
Mexico deaths from swine flu: 19
U.S. deaths from non-swine flu, typical calendar year: 36,000
Total hospitalizations in U.S. due to regular old flu flu, typically: 200,000
Total cases of swine flu in Mexico: 506
Total cases of swine flu in U.S.: 226
Quote from Center for Disease Control chief Dr. Richard Besser:
"The good news is when we look at this virus right now, we're not seeing some of the things in the virus that have been associated in the past with more severe flu. That's encouraging, but it doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet."
Mexico Health Secretary Jose Cordova on the lethality of H1N1: "The attack rate is not as broad as was thought." Only about 1.2 percent of those hospitalized with "acute respiratory symptoms" were dying, he said.
More info: CDC page on swine flu is right here.
Just so you and I have the facts.
But do think of me as the facts guy on H1N1.
U.S. Deaths from swine flu, 2009: 1
Mexico deaths from swine flu: 19
U.S. deaths from non-swine flu, typical calendar year: 36,000
Total hospitalizations in U.S. due to regular old flu flu, typically: 200,000
Total cases of swine flu in Mexico: 506
Total cases of swine flu in U.S.: 226
Quote from Center for Disease Control chief Dr. Richard Besser:
"The good news is when we look at this virus right now, we're not seeing some of the things in the virus that have been associated in the past with more severe flu. That's encouraging, but it doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet."
Mexico Health Secretary Jose Cordova on the lethality of H1N1: "The attack rate is not as broad as was thought." Only about 1.2 percent of those hospitalized with "acute respiratory symptoms" were dying, he said.
More info: CDC page on swine flu is right here.
Just so you and I have the facts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)