The Coconut Rule

What's the real issue with the Swine Flu? I'm not saying that it can't become an epidemic or pandemic. However, so far, we have one death in the United States from the Swine Flue and 13,000 deaths from the normal viral flu that we get every year...in the same timeframe mind you.


Not to belittle the death of a single person. But, Stalin's truism comes to mind, "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."

мертва одного человека, трагедия, мертва миллионих статистика.

Note that this is an unverified quotation as far as I can tell. It sounds like something that Stalin would say, but, who knows.

I have my own rule about this kind of thing. I call it the coconut rule. Unless the number of people affected by something is greater than the number of people killed per year by coconuts, it shouldn't be in the news or be legislated around.

For those of you who are curious...on average, 150 people are killed, per year, by coconuts. Sharks? 6-10 per year. We hear about all the shark attacks, but, no one ever sees anything about the killer coconuts in the news.