If I love you Wednesday, What is that to you?

Oh, hello, Gentle Reader. What a splendid day it is to have a No Whining Wednesday, wouldn't you say?

But Wednesday isn't what I'm going to tell you about right now. Let me tell you about my Tuesday, in food: I started off with a healthy breakfast of oatmeal, accompanied by a delightful cup of cinnamon-hazelnut coffee. Around 11:30 or so, I started to get a bit hungry, so I had a lovely snack of cauliflower with a little bit of sour cream to dip it in. Delicious, and nutritious! Now, before I move on to the afternoon feeding frenzy, let me tell you a little something about the company I work for: they are all about employee morale. Not just in a superficial way, either; they genuinely care about their employees and want us to be happy. Now, there are kind of a lot of us, so instead of every person's birthday being celebrated with a cake &c., we have a "Cake Day" once a month to celebrate everyone's birthday that falls in that month. Yesterday was cake day. Now, often, everyone will get together and chip in for a birthday person's lunch on their actual birthday (or thereabouts). So, yesterday turned out to also be lunch day for LK, who turned 40 this year. The office ordered lunch from a local deli. Now, I already had the fixin's for my daily peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread, but I said "What the heck" and ordered a half-pound of macaroni salad. Figured I'd eat a little on the side, bring it home, have the rest for a few days. Well, here's how that actually worked: I ordered it, ate a quarter pound of it along with my peanut butter sandwich, and then ate a giant slice of birthday cake along with a brownie and some cookies that DH bakes (oh she is such a good baker). Then, I went home from work. I was pretty tired, and I didn't feel like cooking anything, so instead I had a bowl of BooBerry cereal. That's not terribly filling, though, so I was still kinda hungry (I'm not really sure how). So, I finished off the macaroni salad. Then I ate a bunch of Cheetos. Unsurprisingly, I had to put on my big pants this morning. Also, I feel a little bit nauseous. I love my job.

In other birthday-related news, this weekend is my baby sister's 30th birthday. My tiny, preemie baby sister, born at four-and-a-half pounds with a heart murmur. The wee little thing whose diapers I changed, who I fed bottles too, whose ticklish spots I discovered (her neck and her knees. She makes the cutest little giggly snort when you tickle her neck). The first time I touched her was in an incubator at the hospital, a plastic case with holes in the sides and big rubber glove things you stuck your hands in. She made it through, obvs, and she's officially a grownup now. (This also puts all four of us sibs in the same decade, agewise, at least for a year and a couple of months until I ruin it for another 8 years by turning 40.) So, we'll be having a lovely famerly BBQ on Sunday, and there will be much wine and merriment. I love my family. They're all kind of crazy, you know, but who isn't? And they're *my* kind of crazy, so they get me. My sisters are made of pure awesome. I might be a little in love with them.

Anyway, that's my week right now, and where I'm at on the happy scale. Fat and in love with my family. I think it's a pretty good way to be. It's about lunchtime now, and I'm going to the diner today with my boss. She said something about grilled cheese and soup, and that sounds just ambrosial right about now. Off I go then! Happy No Whining Wednesday!

Bubonic plague. Now THERE'S a pandemic.

Here's a paraphrase of a comment I posted on Pajiba this morning:

150 people dead in Mexico .... out of, what, 108 million? I mean, it's sad for their families and everything, but.. pandemic? Really? I don't think this counts as a pandemic. I don't even think it qualifies as an epidemic. Let's consult Merriam Webster:

ep·i·dem·ic : affecting or tending to affect a disproportionately large number of individuals within a population, community, or region at the same time

Nope.

pan·dem·ic : occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population

Nope.

It's less than 1% of the population. Just of Mexico. Actually, it's like one/1,000,000th of the population. Previous pandemics have killed up to 1/2 the population of a given continent (or the human population... let's see, divided by... carry the one... 2/100,000,000th of the world pop).

So, nope.

/paraphrase

Then I went to the BBC news website. Here's what it had to say regarding numbers in this "pandemic":

• Out of 168 deaths in Mexico, only 8 are confirmed to be swine flu.
• There is 1 confirmed death in the U.S.
• In the rest of the world, there are a total of 157 confirmed and 13 suspected cases.

Here's the breakdown:
U.S.-109 confirmed cases. That's cases, NOT deaths.
New Zealand-3 confirmed, 13 suspected cases.
Canada-19 confirmed cases.
U.K.-8 confirmed cases.
Spain-10 confirmed cases.
Israel, Costa Rica-2 confirmed cases each.
Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Peru-1 confirmed case each.

So that's a total, then, of 9 confirmed deaths from swine flu, and 160 more possible deaths. Since all 170 of the instances where people have the virus have evidently been reported, one presumes that those people are seeking medical attention and are going to recover, since it's easily treatable. An international panic is happening over 9 deaths.

9.

Let's assume pessimistically for a moment that all 160 unconfirmed deaths in Mexico turn out to be definitely swine flu. And let's also suppose that those 170 other reported cases die as well. That's a total of 339 deaths. Now let's suppose those people have all infected 3 other people each, and those people all die. That's a total of 1,356 deaths from swine flu. Now let's look at the world population: and we'll round down to 6.7 million. Even assuming this, it's still only 2/100,000ths of the population of the world.

Again, look at the definitions of epidemic and pandemic above. To me, an "exceptionally high proportion of the population" is just that... exceptionally high. Like, 25% high. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that 10% can be considered exceptionally high. That means a minimum of 670,000 people need to be infected. We've got 669,661 cases to go before we reach epidemic proportions. Can we please stop panicking about every little thing? Please?

It's no Black Death, people (cripes, it's not even the Hong Kong flu epidemic of '68). Now there's a pandemic for you.

Here's something to make you feel better though:

Aww! Now there's something you could die from... perhaps it should be called the Adorable Death.

(Cross-posted at Vox)