Houston Toddler Dies of Swine Flu!

So screams the alarmist headline.  What they don’t tell you, is that the boy was from Mexico.  His family took him to Brownsville, where they then sought medical treatment for him.  Medical authorities in Brownsville transferred the boy to a Houston hospital, where he sadly lost his life.

I fully expect to see the city of Houston badly over-react to this, shutting down schools and possibly instituting involuntary quarantines (incarcerations) of persons presenting with symptoms of influenza, as they have done in other states.  Maybe they’ll even officially declare a state of emergency here because of this report.

The interesting thing is, out of more than two thousand confirmed cases of swine flu around the globe, there have been only 160 deaths.  All but one of those, occurred in Mexico.  Meanwhile, plain old garden-variety influenza ordinarily infects up to 20% of the population, causing 200,000 to be hospitalized, and killing 36,000.

So, why don’t we hear about pandemics, quarantines, and emergency drug rulings every year?