H1N1

Daily news reports abound about the spread of the H1N1 virus, and I've just read another insipid article reporting that college students who are 'uninfected' are spending time thinking about whether or not they should go to football games, frat parties and other social venues where they might--horror of horrors--actually get sick! During the summer, I received an e-mail from the White House signed by Kathleen Sebelius, Janet Napolitano and Arne Duncan reminding me of the perils of this virus and telling me to wash my hands. And the media instructs us as to how we should sneeze. This is the kind of talking-to that parents give their pre-schoolers.

Americans, get a grip! Green-movement progressives aside, we are still a first world country and it is the 21st century. We have clean, potable water, sewage systems, medicines, highly-trained doctors and an extensive health care system (for the nonce). We have multi-vitamins and Purell.

It seems the media and the White House are on a campaign to convince as many of us as possible that a big, bad wolf is at our door, and, unless we listen to Mom and Dad in Washington, we just might not be able to handle this nasty virus on our own. If the spread of the H1N1 virus does manifest as a national flu epidemic, our concern should rightly be with the youngest and oldest and weakest among us who will be most susceptible to serious complications from the virus, not a healthy college student who might catch a bug because he shares a glass during his mid-week beer bash.

If only our president and our Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano were as concerned about terrorism and national defense as they pretend to be about protecting us from a virus. If only the president and Secretary Sebelius showed similar concern for protecting the weakest and most vulnerable in our society—the unborn, the elderly and the disabled--by denouncing practices such as abortion and euthanasia that exploit and destroy human lives. If Washington and its right-hand-man, the media, are successful in convincing the country to fear a virus, what other scapegoats will they dangle before us to to incite fear? Hope, indeed.

Hopefully, though, we will not mistake Washington's feigned concern about the nation's health for an Obama government that is ever more openly intent on controlling every aspect of our lives, right down to how we blow our nose.