It's that time of the election season again. 

Pandemic time! And this time it's angry!

You guys actually took my advice? pic.twitter.com/jxp3DBwKFH

— Natalie F Danelishen (@Chesschick01) April 4, 2024

I don't want to dismiss the possibility of a genuinely bad pandemic hitting our shores because it is obviously possible. But really? After the last few years, you would have to be an idiot not to be suspicious when people start trotting out the "We are all going to die!" meme. 

COVID, but 100 times worse! Disease X. Bird Flu. Whatever you want to call it. It's almost as if Taylor Lorenz is running things. 

A bird flu pandemic with the potential to be “100 times worse than COVID” may be on the horizon after a rare human case was discovered in Texas, experts have warned.

The H5N1 avian flu has spread rapidly since a new strain was detected in 2020, affecting wild birds in every state, as well as in commercial poultry and backyard flocks.

But it has now even been detected in mammals, with cattle herds across four states becoming infected, and on Monday federal health officials announced that a dairy worker in Texas caught the virus.

“This virus [has been] on the top of the pandemic list for many, many years and probably decades,” Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a bird flu researcher from Pittsburgh, said at a recent panel discussing the issue, according to the Daily Mail.

“And now we’re getting dangerously close to this virus potentially causing a pandemic.”

"This virus [has been] on the top of the pandemic list for many, many years and probably decades,” Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a bird flu researcher from Pittsburgh." This means that you could say the same thing about the prospects of a bird flu pandemic many times over those many many years and be just as right. Nothing has changed. Human beings have caught bird flu before, and it will happen again.

But so far it is rare. 

Perhaps this is just another scare story to keep people's blood flowing, and nobody is actually trying to restart the disease panic porn in time for the election. But I am skeptical. We keep hearing about "Disease X" and the WHO and the UN are pushing that pandemic treaty that nobody is quite clear about. 

John Fulton, a pharmaceutical industry consultant for vaccines and the founder of Canada-based BioNiagara who organized the meeting, also expressed his concerns, the Mail reports.

“This appears to be 100 times worse than COVID — or it could be if it mutates and maintains its high case fatality rate,” he said.

“Once it’s mutated to infect humans, we can only hope that the [fatality rate] drops.”

In other words, it hasn't mutated to infect humans easily and we don't know what it will be like if and when it does. 

But be scared. And give some money to the researchers, perhaps to manipulate the virus to see what neat things we can do!

It is remarkable to me that we have gone from a society filled with resilient people whose attitude was "rub some dirt in it and you'll be fine" to one in which a large portion of the population is quivering in fear over imagined or exaggerated threats. Entire industries are invested in keeping you panicked, and power in society is distributed based on who is most effective at scaring people. 

We know another pandemic will hit sometime, just as earthquakes, tornados, and hurricanes will. You take reasonable precautions and then move on with your life. 

But this is an election year. The panic porn will be turned up to 11. Maybe we will see birds committing an insurrection or something....