It’s no secret that there has been a recent outbreak of a new strain of influenza, lovingly called the Swine Flu. This Flu started in Mexico and has spread to other parts of the world, including Spain, which of course happens to be where I was just the day before the discovery. Fortunately for me, I seem to have escaped the country still in a healthy state and made it back to my politically neutral and Swine Flu free country of Switzerland. What a great place.
A couple of days go by after my return, and the World Health Organization has raised the level of the outbreak to the second highest level that exists – just short on world panic, essentially. I’m still feeling pretty good at this point though since I’m in Switzerland: I’m high up in the Alps, far away from civilization, and there can’t even be more than a couple thousand people who live in my town. I’m safe – totally and completely safe. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there is no safer place to be right this minute than the Swiss Alps.
Enter Alfredo, a friendly amigo from Mexico City. Seriously? We don’t even have to leave our town now to get Swine Flu, the Swine Flu has been brought to us? My levels of racism are at an all-time high and I consider wearing a mask around the Chalet until my Mexican buddy leaves, I think better of it though, and decide that if he’s come here of the places he could go, if he gives me the Swine Flu, it’s clearly my time to go and I should just get over it already.
Well, I’m over it, and I’m still alive too. Alfredo has gone to spread joy and terror around the rest of Europe and my little nook of the Swiss Alps is once again the safe haven it was meant to be.
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