FIXING THE WORLD 03 It was a Tuesday morning.

My schools principal gathered us to say that a student that had been recently in the USA had the flu. That was enough for a Health Department agent and quarantine a whole class group until next weeks Tuesday. By afternoon time, the entire school knew that a class group had been isolated because of the Pig Flu. Pig flu Why does it scare us so much? Isnt that a kind of flu? The answer is yes and no. It is a kind of flu, indeed, but much more aggressive, so it can be a cause of death. According to our dear Wikipedia, despite pig flu does not affect regularly human population, there are random cases of infections in people. Generally, these cases occur among people who work with fowls and pigs, especially people who are exposed to such animals, and have a bigger risk to get infected in case to have a viral strain that can infect humans. This is due to the fact that pig flu viruses can mutate, and additionally, by a process called reclassification, to acquire issues that allow its transmission among. They have also the capability to modify their structure to stop an organisms defences to be as efficient as usual, triggering viruses to attack again, with a bigger and more damaging effect on health. The same article says that the virus that came up this year, the famous AH1N1, and known as Pig Flu, or Swine flu had turned to be some kind of mixture of human, fowl and two separated pig flu strains genetic material. At first sight, one would think that, because it is a new virus, it would behave just as awfully as HUV or Hepatitis B (which is even more infectious than HUV). The Media, in this servants opinion, has taken charge to create an elephant from a fly by saying that the kind of virus, despite very few good research has been seen. So where does this leave us? Should we be afraid from pig flu? Once again, the answer is yes and no. Yes, because it can be transmitted quite easily among people, through saliva, airborne, or the tight contact among mucus or hand to mouth transmission due to dirty hands. But symptoms use to be subtle and can be treated with no need of medical attention.As a matter of fact, only antiviral medication use is needed. I shall not deny that people have died because of AH1N1 virus, no mention needed. What I dare to ask the media is What were the circumstances in which those people died? Were they being given the necessary care or they, their relatives and / or the doctors didnt take care? Did those patients have any record that shouldve been kept in mind when they got this disease? And a more corrosive one: why werent those circumstances told to the public?

Maybe Ive said it in previous articles, Im not really sure. The fact is that many times a statement we make with nothing to support it may have disastrous consequences. The effect gets multiplied if we keep in mind that such supportless statements are made through different media, such as television, radio, press, Internet, etc. and its right here where the consequences of a misuse of the so called forth power can be found. When supportless news are broadcasted about a certain topic, results may go from embarrassing situations to such catastrophic things as war or even worse, a famine. Once again I quote Tom Clancy, just as I did on Fixing the world 01: Every tool should be used carefully, and this tool admits too terrible abuses to be overlooked. Nothing can make us more powerful than knowledge and information. But denying that knowledge, that information just to raise rating or with lucrative purposes, is something as harmful as any mass destruction weapon, making it possible to reach situations such as the one that made Leonardo Da Vinci say: Bad mouths kill more than swords. Lets hope that from now on, it shall be knowledge and information the ones that allow us to look at the future with some more hope than pessimism.

In Cali, 00:29 of July 25th of 2.009