Liberal Talk Radio

As some of you will know, one of my bete noirs is poor personal hygiene, especially of the kind that leads to spreading illness. I sort of understand why hourly wage workers are reluctant to miss time from work, but it bothers me tremendously to see salaried employees — all of whom have laptops and high-speed connections at home — soldiering on vaingloriously and sharing with all the gift of their illness. For example, one of my cube-neighbors recently came down with a cold, and it’s been fascinating hearing the cacophony of coughs and sneezes spread slowly outward like ripples in a vast pond of snot and phlegm. And the kicker is, not only do most of these well-intentioned but ill-guided office warriors show up for work when they should be home watching The Price is Right, but paltry few of them seem to be aware of even basic illness-prevention hygiene — cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, wash your hands frequently, etc.

So the prospect of a pandemic flu terrifies me. Forget WMD, earthquakes, asteroid strikes, or whatever, flu is the most likely cause of untimely demise faced by most people in the world today.

DESPITE all the attention given to anthrax and smallpox and potential weapons of mass destruction, pandemic influenza is probably the world’s most serious near-term public health threat. If a strain similar in effect to the 1918 Spanish flu (which killed tens of millions of people worldwide) emerges in the next several years, it is highly likely that an effective vaccine will not be available during the pandemic’s first wave, that we won’t have enough antiviral drugs for large-scale prophylactic use, and that hospitals will be too overwhelmed to treat most cases.

(Check out Slate for another take on the likelihood of a global pandemic, and how to survive it.)

The authors of the piece quoted above provide excellent arguments for the use of surgical masks to stop the spread of flu, especially in the early stages of a pandemic.

Given that most people can’t even cover their mouths when they sneeze, I think we’d all be f***ed.

Side note: King County’s Metro Transit has signs up on their buses encouraging people (in several languages!) to “cover your sneeze.” Kudos to them. But the other day I heard a couple of young 20-somethings deriding the signs as “liberal propaganda.” Seriously. Has public discourse degraded to the point where sensible health advice is considered partisan?