Last post before my swiney death

I know that my time is short. Any second now, I'll succumb, in grisly fashion, to the swine flu virus that has killed millions of people already. (Researches for a second.)

Okay, has killed hundreds. (Researches further.)

Okay, has killed ones of people already. We're still all going to die, I tells you, because this strain of flu is too virulent to exist outside of a George Romero movie. You so much as mention the words "swine flu," and you're dead before you hit the floor. Plus, your intestines squirt out your eyes, AND your brain bursts into flames! It's virulent! It's new and improved virulent, and deadly! (Does a little bit more research.)

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza -- at least in its current form -- isn't shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

What a gyp. So now we're NOT all going to die a grisly death, flopping around like spastic, beached flounders, with our intestines bursting out our eyes? I would have appreciated being told this BEFORE I went and loaded up every credit card I could get my hands on in a pre-apocalyptic bacchanalia of spending.

Please explain to me how, in an age where we're swimming (not "literally swimming," because that would imply we were doing the Australian Crawl atop data) in data, so many people can be so ridiculously uninformed. We don't have to wait for the morning or evening paper, or the top-of-the-hour newscast. We don't even have to be hooked into the grid. You can wirelessly surf via laptop or BlackBerry and avail yourself of more breaking news than every newspaper editor in the history of the world had at his disposal. But we still run around peeing on ourselves, when it'd actually be safer to emulate Shaun and his friends in "Shaun of the Dead" and be ignorant of the zombies around you than panic over an imminent death from nonexistent zombies. ("Don't forget to kill Phillip!")

If this were a "Twilight Zone" episode, this would be the point when I notice a sniffle, and then turn on the television to find that swine flu has indeed mutated into full-blown Guacamole Fever, and all of humanity is doomed. But Rod Serling is long dead, and my theology really doesn't accommodate a God who's so into plot twists that he kills you for mania skepticism. And if I'm wrong, and I do die because of this post, well, at least I won't have to pay off those Visa bills.