Flu in a Time of Globalism

The shrinking of the world is not a good thing always. As the circle of our horizon seems to close in on us, as it takes less and less time to go from place to place, so also does the distance between threat and target, between danger and death.

Mutant H1N1 swine flu has now reached Canada, France, Hong Kong, Israel, New Zealand, and Spain.

I suspect everyone will be (if they're not already) at Yellow Alert by the end of today. To quote from CNN, "Keiji Fukuda, the assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, called the outbreak "serious" on Sunday. Researchers are still trying to determine how easily the virus is transmitted person to person and it's too early to predict whether there will be a mild or serious pandemic, said Fukuda."

Yeah, your choices are between a mild pandemic and a serious one. Way to go, mutant. You'll go far.

At the same time, what intrigues me is how long authorities take to decide this is bad. I'm waiting to see when Singapore Atlantis caves in. It's a sort of globalism benchmark, being an alpha world city and all that. The decision to declare an emergency status is a bit like a move in a game of chicken. If you chicken out too early, you might lose things like tourism revenues. If you chicken out too late, you might lose things like lives. Heh.