Floating My Sign

I didn't want to, but I'm going to have to talk about the Great Flu Epidemic of 2009 this week, because I can't row fast enough against the raging stream.

Before I get started, I want to talk about my receding hairline. It could have been worse. But in 1984, at the age of 35, the year I sometimes pretend was my entry into adulthood, and I decided to let my zodiac sign "float", I also decided to wear hats. The idea was to test the theory that hat-wearing among men causes male-pattern baldness, by myself wearing hats. My experiment has shown conclusively that it prevents male-pattern baldness and causes a receding hairline instead.

So, what I'm saying is, I know a little something about the scientific method. I am a practiced inducer. I have had a scientific inducation.

So I am exactly the person you should come to, to get all your answers to your urgent concerns about the so-called swine flu. My answers won't be based on what Fox news says about. My answers will be based on Science.

Science says flus are caused by viruses, and that viruses are tiny little things that are arguably alive and arguably not. They are therefore the scientific equivalent of the living dead. People call them bugs, but under a microscope they look nothing like bugs. I saw a picture of one once that looked like the thing Captain Kirk made crazy by being illogical with it.

Viruses have genetic stuff like DNA or RNA. You have lots of both, but you're alive. Your typical virus only has one or the other, and what it has is paltry, so it's needy. Can you say "codependent"?

Your so-called swine flu virus actually has genetic stuff from birds, pigs, and humans. Some people think this means it must have been manufactured in a lab, but Science says that it's not that hard for genetic material from all those sources to get mixed up in one virus. In fact, viruses jump around from host to host fairly easily, and the mixing of genetic material between virus and host or between two viruses infecting the same host happen fairly often.

Some days ago a Canadian pig farmer returned from a trip to Mexico, already with the flu. Apparently, he then sneezed on his pigs, because they got what he had.

That's so important, it bears repeating. He didn't get the flu from his pigs. His pigs got it from him. They got farmer flu. Now that they've got the farmer flu, farmer genes can mix with pig genes to make a new kind of farmer-pig flu. Now say one of the pigs that has the new strain of virus sneezes on the farmer's pet parrot. You could see how that could get you pig-parrot-farmer flu. OK? Well, something like that already happened with this virus in the past.

Now let's talk about what we should do about this situation. By "we" of course, I mean me, © Dr. Wes Browning. How am I going to save my ass while everyone else is losing theirs?

One thing I could do is just sit tight and wait for Science to come up with a vaccine for this thing. That will take, they say, four or five months. By then, they think we may have experienced what they call a "second wave" of infections, and who knows, a third and a fourth, and the viruses could have gotten worse in the meantime. So waiting sucks.

Therefore my plan is to get the disease now while it's on special. After all, it's been said over and over again that the version going around here is mild. Well, then, that's the version I want. Not as pleasant as a vaccine but does the same trick sooner.

I figure the best way for me to get it is to get everybody else to stop panicking and let this sucker run its course. Can I have that, please?