Rhume for improvement

I know that I run the risk of being accused of being one of those celebrities who don’t stand behind a cause unless it affects them personally. The general line of questioning goes: Would Reagan have stood so vehemently behind Alzheimer’s research if he wasn’t starting to get a bit sketchy himself? Would Chris Reeve have been so supportive of stem cell research if it hadn’t been for his own accident? Doesn’t this mean they’re just self-serving pricks who don’t really care about moving the cause forward except when it comes to them?

I say “hell no!” on their behalf, and and also for me by way of corollary (pure logic, baby). There’s a million and one things to get behind, from diseases, to famine, to war. Expecting anyone to get behind them all of them really just mirrors the decrier’s own lack of sanity. It’d be easy enough to clam up anyone who decides to go down that path by scaling the question down to pleb level and asking which local charities they themselves haven’t contributed to. The only correct follow-up to their answer is, “well why not, jerk face?” — that usually pacifies everyone.

Oh, and also, I’m not a celebrity. So with righteous aplomb, I continue.

I have the flu. If it isn’t the flu, some bacterium is a master of disguise. I have all the classic symptoms; chills, intermittent fever, headache, sneezing, snotting, and otherwise expelling pus. I’m writing this from my convalescence couch (eh, who am I kidding, by convalescence I mean just regular ole’ life. I just like alliterations).

“Oh, big whoop,” I hear you say, “everyone’s had the flu. My four-year-old niece doesn’t blog about it when she’s sick; what’s so special about you?”

What a loaded question, dear imaginary interlocutor. Let me start by casting doubt on your niece’s ability to write a multi-paragraph expository work of any kind. That is all. I guess I shouldn’t have started that without a second point. Oh well.

My aim wasn’t to heap aspersions on your nieces or nephews anyway, but rather to draw attention to the fact that Influenza is probably the world’s deadliest communicable disease and, since it’s affecting me, to try to encourage you to do something about it.

The statistics are a bit fuzzy at the upper end of the scale because Influenza is lumped into the “Lower respiratory infections” group (basically lung problems). A bit of reading reveals that yes, the flu can cause this type of complication, but not always. Usually this happens in the elderly or infirm, but there’s always one variant or another that has the ability to be more profoundly harmful to everyone.

...continued at TorontoCityLife.com

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