First SARS, which became a joke the second we realized we wouldn't all die from it, and now "swine flu," which sounds like a nickname for a hangover.
"Is he really sick, or does he just have a case of the 'swine flu'?"
Do we live in an age so embarrassing to history that even our pandemics sound ironic?
So I dip into Twitter and discover to my dismay and comfort that my drinking buddy Steve Crescenzo coined “the wine flu” yesterday.
“Asian bird flu” doesn’t do much to increase the street cred of epidemics.
This would be a hell of a lesson, would it not?
“A population that had spent all fall and winter paralyzed with fear of an economic calamity was wiped out by a sudden swine flu in the spring.”
As my mother would say: JESUS!
Except, that’s probably not ACTUALLY what your mother would have said, is it?