Could everyone please tone down the crazy a little bit with regard to the influenza?

Strains of influenza virus like this show up. It’s happened before and will happen again. This one might go big and cause a lot of suffering, and probably won’t. The WHO and national agencies are doing a good job of coordinating and sharing information. All you can actually do right now is hope things go well and not cough on each other, and wash your hands regularly. That’s it. Really.

Conspiracies, fakes, government-created viruses, the national politics of your country and others, the bad behavior of pharmaceutical companies, and the current oncoming worldwide financial depression are possible but unlikely sources of the problem. None of these exciting things are necessary to explain an influenza outbreak.

Conspiracies do exist, and many are successful. They are boring, and unsurprisingly they don’t show up on CNN. Fat white men in suits conspire to start wars, fix prices, steal natural resources, poison people, and crush the rights of individuals. They get away with it most of the time. Keep your eye on those bastards.

These guys don’t need to create an influenza pandemic, or fake 9/11’s plane crashes, or kill Princess Diana, or hide the UFOs. Those are things that happen in movies where our heroes run in slow-mo from an explosion at the end.

In short, it’s very unlikely that the swine flu is engineered by some shadowy cabal. It’s much more likely that it’s an outbreak of a nasty flu strain.

But almost everything about your daily life is in some way made worse by those fat white men in suits cutting deals with your birthright. Maybe they deserve more of your attention.