Every time some new super bug or other pathogen rears its ugly head in the news, I think about the now forgotten Spanish Flu pandemic that hit the world at the turn of the 20th century. Reading about it when I was kid, the Spanish Flu burned a place among my neurons for all time not only because it killed somewhere between 20 and 100 million people worldwide, but also because I hated the fact that it was called the Spanish flu. Why couldn’t it be German or English? Initially, España got the worst of the casualties (around 8 million); so, the whole world was looking to it as ground zero for the epidemic. Ironically, most scientists now believe that the bug started in Kansas.
In any case, the name stuck. I can’t say definitively that Americans were quick to call this negative creature Spanish. I can’t say they were also quick to characterize the 1957 Asian flu pandemic or the 1968 Hong Kong Flu as Asian.. I can only say that life must have sucked if you were Spanish or Asian in those days.
So now we have the Swine Flu which may or may not have originated in Mexico and may or may not have been caused by the US corporation, Smithfield. I won’t say that I am not scared as hell, but I am ECSTATIC that no one is yet calling it the Mexican Flu!
But I wonder: did that guy in the elevator with me this morning cover his face with his jacket because he was cold?
Cockroach People 