The Shot

I was the recipient of my H1N1 shot yesterday. I don't seem to have any side effects, yet. My arm is OK if I move it most ways but there are a couple of angles that I seem to want to stop moving it for the moment. In the big picture I have moved from one statistic to the other.

Enough about me.

The whole H1N1 thing is scary and not scary at the same time. On the one hand its ripping through the young healthy population. It has killed a few and made a whole bunch of people feel really bad for a few days. Nobody likes to be sick, and a lot of productivity will be lost during the latest wave. However, we will get through this.

Many people will get inoculated, others will get sick, some will get both (those are the really unlucky ones) but through this humanity will begin to resist this strain of the flu. At some point in the future, this latest threat will become a lesser threat. In many years we will sit around and talk about this like we talk about many other significant moments that define a generation. This occurrence will become part of the collective conscious, and that's OK. I'm not suggesting that a pandemic is a good thing but it is an opportunity to grow and learn. We see what we can do in trying times. I don't know how trying this is, but I do know it has a lot of people concerned.

People are afraid to catch this bug. People are concerned about the vaccine. People are concerned for their children. People are worried because most of us in the general population do not have the knowledge to evaluate the facts, we are at the mercy of the people who know about this stuff, and many people are distrusting of authority. This distrust makes fear-mongering easier. If there are opportunities for people to leverage situations there will always be people who will try to do so. Where we come in is to be logical, and seek out information. We must make the best decision for ourselves and our communities. In doing so we will move beyond this and learn from it and that is an upside to a not so good situation.