Remember last fall's "Pandemic" ?

This was part of an MPR story today--about concussions from playing sports:
"...But her family thought those were all signs that Nickel had caught H1N1 influenza, which was spreading rapidly throughout Minnesota at the time".


Argh!  I've heard references twice this week (on MPR which I normally trust), to the "rapid spread" of that terrible deadly H1N1 flu we were all just barely avoiding last fall at this time.  Remember the scare tactics?  and the draconian precautions?
In the past, in our ancestors' time, there really WERE epidemics of cholera and small pox and plague, where many thousands died and whole villages were wiped away.  How dare we call that mini-outbreak last fall anything more than a normal flu season?

I wonder--maybe humans need something to fear?  Johann and Marya Hesch lived thru the 1848 revolution in Austria/Bohemia.  The revolution caused food shortages, which caused more disease.  By 1869, having survived all that, they left for an uncertain future in America.  Son Paul was already in Minnesota by then  and he probably wrote home to encourage his folks and brother Anton to come.  But what a frightening thing traveling that far must have been for them.  THEY had true hardships, and lived in a relatively germy world with little sanitation and only folk medicines while WE live in almost sterile surroundings where most kids have never actually been dirty or even hungry.



WAIT, you say--there were people who caught H1N1 flu, right? And even some who died?
Oh yes, in a state with a population of  5,266,214 (2009 census bureau estimate), there were a whole 278 confirmed cases and three deaths.  Our ancestors would have used a few rude German words to describe us, I think.

(I wonder too WHY this "pandemic" thing makes me so angry.  To hear even MPR so blatantly re-write history, so soon, disgusts me.  Next, we'll hear that the last president was actually eloquent). (SIGH!)