Of Birds, Swine, and Guns

A couple of years ago it was all about Bird Flu. It was gonna kill us all. We had national and state government websites about it. My company even had a spot about it on their intranet site. According to Wikipedia, in the last 7 years there were 421 cases of bird flu, with 257 deaths, a 61% death rate, which is pretty bad. On the other hand, none of these cases were in a country with anything remotely resembling a health care system.

But you can forget about those websites, because now we have a real killer, Swine Flu. We now have a public health emergency, with, according to Wikipedia, 11 laboratory confirmed cases in the southwestern United States and in Kansas, and several suspected cases in the New York City metropolitan area.

Now, let's look at a real problem: Gun deaths in America. In 200 alone, alone, 30,136 Americans died by gunfire, according to the NRA. Maybe it's time we started addressing this real public health menace!