The Day of Pigs

In the news...a deadly virus is going to kill us all.

We are all going to die. Again.

Over our bacon and eggs, as we nonchalantly shrugged off familiar echoes of global recession and renegade communist leaders shooting rockets into the sky above us, the sound of poor people dying in a poor country hardly made anyone wink. But then something started leaking west-ward (non-geographically speaking), and we perked our ears.

CNN opened the news sequence with the headline: Swine Flu Outbreak. Ok. A picture of a scared-looking little girl in a face-mask, her big brown eyes looking into the camera hangs as a solemn retribution on the studio screen. Another poster-child for disaster. And now, from the creators of the chilling The End of the World II, comes a brilliant new sequel... The pretty anchor looks on compassionately as people reports hurry in about people in New Zealand preparing to stock up not only on surgical masks, but also food and matches. As the queues outside clinics and departure desks in Mexico grow longer, we go live to London Heathrow, where the authorities are getting ready for the Second Coming. It is a grim day, wind slapping torrential rain over the face of a dainty blonde reporter in a long coat and gloves. It is almost May. Somehow we immediately doubt the tropical virus’ chances of survival here. Maybe that’s why the BBC World News are keeping so cool.

But while we go live to London, where soft-spoken university professors are reassuring us that it is too early to worry, and it is still a few days before we see Barack Obama talking about the importance of washing your hands and sneezing into your arm, the Russians don’t seem much bothered. The headline on Monday Channel One News is...the Russian patrol ship has captured one pirate vessel off the Somali coast. Well, such was Russia’s response to the marauding crisis in the African waters about a month ago; it’s reassuring to know the idea was not completely ridiculous. After all, what is the use of just one ship? Bite that, skeptics.

Not that Russia ignored the subject completely. The day when the first cases have migrated to Europe, the state channel raised the question of Russian citizens reconsidering their May-day trips to Spain and France, with over 30% of all purchased tours having been cancelled. You can’t but smile at the idea of the swarms of freshly-baked non-communists spending the most socialist of all holidays at European resorts. Spring in Paris. Indeed, so much has changed. And Gorbachev is still not getting much credit. But overall, the Russian response to the looming pandemic has been rather lukewarm as second-rate news. This coming from a peoples who disconnected two train-cars and held up an entire line of railroad last month when an Asian-looking woman exhibited flu-like symptoms on a train to Moscow. Yes, apparently no one listens to the news.

Today is Saturday, and the western media is still opening with the news from Mexico. A grotesque 300, 000 pigs are reported to await slaughter in Cairo. All of a sudden, the authorities are not happy with the idea of down-town farms run on garbage waste. Well, better late than never. Sorry for the pigs. Especially since it is not even called ‘swine flu’ anymore. Yes, if you didn’t know that, you haven’t been listening, just like the Russians. Tut-tut. Reports say that the name has been changed to ‘novel flu’ (and some, less politically-correct places, ‘Mexican flu’) to avoid panic and ensure that people still bought completely safe pork. Or perhaps, as the idea of a pandemic spread across our consciousness, someone suggested that it would seem a lot nobler if millions of people died of the ‘novel flu’. Even if they died like pigs.