[Marxism] Flooey thoughts...

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

While still running around with a runny nose on account of the 'flu, thought
I would do a little factfinding on the great 1918 influenza pandemic. I
don't know if you've heard of it, but it's quite a story. As a summary, a
few numbers.

World war 1 is supposed to have claimed around 15 milllion lives. But
according to the Spartacus site, "It has been estimated that throughout the
world over 70 million people died of the [1918] influenza pandemic. In India
alone, more people died of influenza than were killed all over the world
during the entire First World War."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWinfluenzia.htm

Staggering isn't it.

Another estimate I saw was 30-40 million, even so, the death toll defies
comprehension.

For comparison, the number of deaths from AIDS in 2003 is said to be in the
range of 2.6 to 3.3 million people. http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm

Moral of the story ? There is certainly a war against terror which needs to
be fought, except I think it's a bit different from what you might read in
the press about it. It's not really about guys running around toting
machine-guns so much, more a "silent sort of death". Even if you had really
good biochemical weapons, you wouldn't be able to kill that many people with
them I would think, or at least, it would take years and years of steady
bombardment.

Well anyway. Call me a nancy if you like, but I'm staying in rest of the
day. I feel stuffed, and I haven't even done any work yet. Got to watch
myself, these fluey episodes get in the way of productivity.

When one starts to think depressively or thoughtlessly along the lines of
"f**k it, I don't care" usually one ends up thinking later "I wish I had"...
at least that's my experience. If you're not healthy, you're not much good
to anybody, including yourself. Selfcare is survival. A simple insight
maybe, but not to be taken for granted... one of those things where you
don't know what you got, until you lose it.... and life doesn't necessarily
have a happy ending... you might lose more, than you can ever get back
again.

Yours snottily,

Jurriaan



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