Fuck The Swine Flu

Mmm, bacon!

There's been a lot of shit tossed the Flames (and now the Leafs and Canucks) way recently in the wake of their entire team, families, and farm team getting H1N1 vaccines in a cushy private clinic, while the rest of Canada has to stand out in the cold, waiting in line for hours. But I think people just need to take a step back, maybe take a deep breath, and just settle down for a god damn minute. Sure it looks really bad when a bunch of millionaire athletes get preferential treatment over the rest of us average schlubs, but is anyone really surprised? It's not the first time this has happened and it certainly won't be the last. And it's not like Jarome Iginla walked into a hospital and pulled the needle straight out of a sick kids arm and shot himself up with the vaccine, followed by spitting in the kids face and then laughing at him.


I think that perhaps the bigger issue we should look at here is how insanely blown out of proportion this whole H1N1 thing has gotten in the first place.
I can absolutely understand why someone who is sick, elderly, pregnant or a young child would be smart to get it. They have far weaker immune systems than the rest of us. But the people that are doing the most complaining seem to be completely healthy adults, who think that if they don't get this shot they are 100% certain to die. At the end of the day it's nothing more than a bad flu, and I guarantee half the people that are clamoring hand over fist to get an H1N1 vaccine rarely, if ever, get a regular flu shot.
Just because a couple of hockey teams got the shot doesn't mean that millions of Canadians are going to die as a direct result. Sure it was a dick move to jump ahead of people that actually need it, but as David Staples pointed out in one of his posts, at the time those teams got the shots there were supposedly enough to go around for everybody. And if you or I were at work, and your boss came up to you and offered you a free vaccine without having to wait in line for it, would you not take it? Of course you would. Unless you're skeptical about all medicine in general, but that's probably just me.

There's a couple parties at fault here. The Canadian government for not only failing to secure enough vaccines to treat the entire country, or at least those who chose to get the vaccine, and then going and telling everyone there was more than enough vaccine to go around. It's one thing to get people's hopes up about tax refunds, or a new stop sign or some shit, but when it's something that can potentially save lives you might want to wait until you actually get the box of vaccines before you start promising everyone that they'll get one.

And the media for blowing this whole thing so far out of proportion that idiots out there are stricken with fear, thinking that no matter what you do you're going to catch the swine flu, and if you haven't been vaccinated you're absolutely going to die from it. Remember when we were all going to die from SARS? And the bird flu? And that time they had to kill every cow in Alberta just so we didn't all become zombies from catching mad cow? Yeah it's the same thing. Maybe if people weren't so fucking over medicated to begin with our bodies might be able to actually fight off a decent flu without people rushing to the hospital.

At the end of the day the Flames and the Canadian government both look like dicks. The Flames in the way they handled it. They could have just said "Look, we fucked up. We didn't have any idea at the time that people were going to be standing in line for 8 hours and that there wouldn't be enough for everyone. Our bad". But instead they acted more like "Hey man fuck you, I don't care who gets H1N1 as long as I don't die. I'm rich bitch!". That hardly ever goes over well. And the Canadian Government for giving people false hope, and for allowing doctors and other health officials to administer the shots before they knew if they had enough.

I think people are getting far too worked up over something that has been around, and been killing people for 100's, if not 1000's of years. Yes my friends, believe it or not the dreaded Swine Flu is nothing more than a mutated strand of the common flu. Sure our bodies aren't 100 percent equipped to fight it off in some cases, but what is this 1923? No, we have more than enough modern medicine and machines and microscopic robots to help us not die from this type of shit. I don't have a problem with people wanting to get a vaccine just to increase their odds of not catching it, but let's stop acting like this is some kind of cancer cure. It's a fucking flu shot, and like I said earlier, how many of us get flu shots on the regular? Wash your hands regularly, drink plenty of fluids, bundle up and you should be just fine.

P.S If I die from the swine flu I want you all to know that it fucking sucked, it's all the Calgary Flames fault and I'll see each and everyone of you in hell!

-jeanshorts