Zombie Dreams & The Swine Flu

I had horrid zombie dreams last night. A friend mentioned SHE had zombie dreams Tuesday night so maybe the seed was planted there or I’ve just seen too many zombie movies and this whole Swine Flu thing is creeping into my head as a potential source for zombie attack. I actually rather enjoy zombie movies (my favs are: 28 Days Later & the Resident Evil series because Mila Jovovich kicks some series zombie ass) because they are of the few horror variety that actually scare me, so sadly I do it to myself. And last night in my dreams I wasn’t even afraid of the zombies all that much, even though they were horrendous and chasing me everywhere. I was more panicked about finding and protecting Max from zombie bites…..wait, maybe the zombies are Sean in my dreams? Cripes, I can’t analyze myself. That’s what therapy is for.

So yeah, that was my dream sequence last night and I’m not feeling 100% at the moment, so I slept like 9 hours and I dream really deeply when I sleep that much and they tend to be very vivid. This morning all I could think about was the Swine Flu pandemic freak out. If someone traveled to the future from 1949 were to watch the news in this country on any given day, they’d run screaming for the nearest bomb shelter and never come out. It’s really a sad state of affairs, it really seems impossible to get any information in this country without someone’s spin on it, which I guess is human nature AND there’s that whole “freedom of speech” thing we are so proud of. Why must it be taken so far tho? When this type of thing occurs then the media becomes positively titillated with delight on yet another subject which can be used to pollinate the masses with drama. I swear you can see those people salivating on the television screen and I don’t even watch network TV news, I can’t imagine how that must look. All I can do is give Alternet.org a big high five and try to avoid the mass hysteria being propagated about things like the Swine Flu and the Craigslist Killer.

Please don’t misunderstand my concern about these issues. Of course I care that people have died and there is no doubt there should be notification to the public about the potential dangers of the current world health situation, without question the public has the right to this information. However, there truly are just as many other terrifying virus critters like the common staph infection that is leaping from hospitals to the main stream and infecting children on soccer fields with MSSA or the obvious and that is that 10s of thousands of people die from the common flu virus in this country every year. And I have yet to see that on a news report even once, except for when a basketball star contracted the virus from the locker room and had to have surgery to save his life.

Obviously, the news organizations could spend say 5 minutes reporting on the major issues facing the human culture at any given moment and be on 24/7 and they would never, ever run out of topics of severity.

What I wonder is who deems it “news” or “breaking news”? Where does it trickle down from? And why, instead of creating panic or giving the impression that the end times are near, aren’t the news organizations held accountable for their reporting styles and methods? Wouldn’t it make more sense to AVOID freaking people out as the end result? We all know FoxNews is about the most biased crap on cable television, but isn’t it obvious that a lot of other places in which one might gather the news from is also biased? There must be some where that provides simply the facts and allows its viewers/readers to make their own decisions?

Sigh. I realize this is probably a loosing battle. I know all is not lost and I have hope always, but sometimes I get a little worn down from the constant barrage of information. I feel like I try to avoid it, but it just worms its way in because even if I don’t watch it, everyone is talking about it. And if people are afraid, then so be it. Talk about it, work out how you are feeling and then take the appropriate measures to protect yourselves. Avoid spreading viruses AND panic. I cannot believe that the public has to be reminded to wash their hands regularly and take standard precaution when in public area’s about human cross contamination, but maybe that’s all that early childhood education first aid and CPR course material resonating in my head. I feel tremendous empathy and sadness for those who are suffering at the moment because of this virus. I hope it can be contained and that no more casualties will occur as a result. Hopefully all this hand washing advice will have some kind of positive result, I guess what I would hope is that people don’t start to panic until there’s a good reason too. There are already scam artists out there trying to scam people out of vaccination money! What the hell is wrong with people?

I guess I am a little cranky at the moment because my throat is sore, I have a headache and the constant drone and jokes surrounding the Swine Flu are making me want to crawl back into bad, even if it does mean zombie dreams again.