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Because I feel like the swine flu has managed to affect our plurks, discussions and lives despite the fact that not a single person in this area has it, I thought this would be a perfect time to blog about my interest in viruses. Ever since I was young I’ve had a very strong and very strange obsession with viruses and diseases and basically anything that is deadly and relates to the medical field (hence my desire to work in medicine for years). I was the girl in high school who got excited after watching a video on the Ebola virus in class. The last time that the avian flu craze happened (I believe I was a sophomore in high school) I was fascinated with it, checking the news websites every single morning before school. I find that there is nothing more terrifying than diseases, and being a horror fanatic, my favorite movies are always the ones that have to do with quick spreading viruses (28 Days Later, Cabin Fever, Resident Evil, Quarantine, Doomsday etc). I can honestly say that my obsession with zombies is most likely a small piece of my overall love of viruses. Hell, I even love reading books that are about viruses, such as Infected and Contagious!

Nine Movie Viruses Scarier than the Swine Flu:
http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror_15047.html

One of the things that fascinates me most about the swine flu (and the avian flu, SARS, etc) is the mass panic and hysteria that began and how it gets more and more out of hand. Within hours of reading the news about the swine flu on MSNBC I heard people talking about it everywhere. In classes, on plurk, on my way to work, on every single news website, etc. I love how easy it is to get up to date news online, but it would seem that technology has found its way into feeding us the panic. Even the Center of Disease Control has a damn Twitter! I’m just surprised they don’t have a Facebook and a Myspace too (I haven’t actually checked but in order to keep some respect for this technology insanity I’m not going to check). Not only did Twitter help to spread the panic of the swine flu pandemic, but I found it quite amusing that people managed to create a hoax by twittering a news story on what was flagged as actually a real BBC article. The news story was as follows:

“EU Quarantines London in Flu Panic”
There has been a small outbreak of “zombism” in London due to mutation of the H1N1 virus into new strain: H1Z1. Similar to a scare originally found in Cambodia back in 2005, victims of a new strain of the swine flu virus H1N1 have been reported in London. After death, this virus is able to restart the heart of it’s victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believe to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.” (http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/05/01/london-is-not-quarantined-by-zombie-swine-flu-yet-tweetmeme-lets-hoax-bbc-story-go-unchecked/)

Actual website for the fake BBC site: http://bouncewith.me.uk/europe/8027043.htm
This website even leads you to ANOTHER fake news article referring to the past disease ‘found in Cambodia back in 2005’
http://web.archive.org/web/20050428004220/http:/65.127.124.62/south_asia/4483241.stm.htm

How is this not completely amazing? And the fact that the said ‘tweet’ was spread thousands of times in the past couple days. And I will admit myself that when I saw the news article about it the first thing that went through my mind was “Hell yes!” before I actually had time to realize its obvious hoaxness. I have been having a lot of fun (yes I did use the word fun) tracking the swine flu on FluTracker (http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/ though I am curious how this says there are confirmed cases in Washington when I’m pretty sure there are only 45 suspected cases).

What exactly is it about viruses, blood, death and mass hysteria that for some reason fascinate me? I have absolutely no idea but I have done a lot of field research to try and figure it out. I have stood in protective clothing and a face mask, watching as someone with the Flesh Eating Virus got their necrotic skin cut off. I have held a human brain in my hands after watching a doctor saw through a lady’s skull. I have seen a woman die from internal bleeding and a man freshly pulled from a fire with over half of his body melted off. I have sorted and arranged by date hundreds of containers full of body parts and hardly even noticed the cracked jars that leaked formaldehyde on my hands.

I’ve been eagerly waiting for years for an actually interesting virus to actually spread necessary panic and unfortunately I’m pretty sure that swine flu is not it. The amount of freaking out that has happened worldwide is far more drawn out by technology then needed (kind of like SARS if I remember correctly) and is consuming our lives more than is necessary.