Small Fish, Big Pond

Ugh, I’m sick again. At least this time it’s a real flu and not from shitty mexican food from a cheap restaurant.

To tell you the truth it’s probably from going to the free Iron & Wine concert at the Galivan on Thursday (after the Rifftrax show, which was awesome!!). The Galivan plaza was packed shoulder to shoulder, the biggest I’ve seen this year and probably ever. I’m not a fan of Iron & Wine and this show confirmed that, but I do like going to big events to do some people watching. However it looks like this time it bit me in the ass, somebody there had a bug and it’s probably spreading like wildfire among the indie-yuppies of Salt Lake City now.

Anyway reading through some news today was an article in the Mainichi News that swine flu is approaching epidemic levels in Japan. The part that got me was this:

Between Aug. 3 and 9, when the average reached 0.99, the total number of infections in Japan was estimated to be over 60,000. There is a high possibility that the figure has been increasing since then.
…
Analysis by public health institutes across Japan has determined that roughly 80 percent of cases are swine flu cases. Most of the remaining cases are infections of the Hong Kong A strain. The National Institute of Infectious Diseases estimates that almost all of the people infected from July onwards have been infected with swine flu.

80% of the cases are swine flu! If that same stat holds true for America that mean I have a 4 in 5 chance of having swine flu!

Although I’m not too worried according to the CDC about 36,000 people in America die every year from flu-related causes. I’m not sure how many people have died nation wide from swine flu but considering how big of a deal the news makes when people become infected with it I think it’s still well below 36 thousand deaths. In which case I’m lucky to have swine flu, it’s less likely to kill me than the regular flu.

Anyway it seems to be hitting pretty hard in Japan too (not surprising how densely packed people are there). Maximum the Hormone had to cancel a few shows because the lead singer caught H1N1 (check’em out, it’s one of my favorite Japanese bands). And six of the thousands of AKB48 members have been stricken with the flu as well (they’re an Idol Group similar to Hello!Project).