Avian flu fear flies out window in face of daily woes
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, October 18, 2005

With all due respect to the bird flu, have you noticed that the general response to the looming global pandemic has a slight ``I'll get to it when I get to it'' feel?

If you're in the mood to panic, it's there for you, and yet, if you've got more pressing concerns - an attic to clean, hair issues, a pair of shoes to return, whatever - you can deal with the flu later. As disasters go, it's very patient. At least for the moment.

``I'm really worried about it,'' one woman told me. She's going to stockpile water and canned food, she said, and try to score Tamiflu for her family. Well, right after she finds princess trinkets for her daughter's birthday-party goody bags, that is.

``I'm not saying planning a 5-year-old's birthday party is the equivalent of getting ready for avian flu,'' she said, ``but it is. There's no way I could do both at the same time.''

Jeez, what does a viral catastrophe have to do to get some respect around here?

Actually, speaking of respect, one woman who fears she is thought of as shallow has been using the flu to boost her gravitas. ``I held forth about the flu of 1918 at a dinner party,'' she said, ``and I felt like people were taking me seriously.''

Even as Americans are visiting the CDC's avian flu information Web page at a rate of 447,000 hits a day, and blasting the Bush administration for ordering Tamiflu rather on the late side, there's an optional quality to all-out freaking.

``I'm periodically panicked,'' one man told me, ``and then I forget all about it, and I stress out about something else, like the country's economy,'' or whether his TiVo is properly recording shows in his absence.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

``I am worried,'' another woman told me quite cheerfully. ``But I'm too lazy to do anything like buy extra food or water. Besides, I think it's 200 years away.'' And nothing's sadder than pre-deceasing your disaster supplies.

Meanwhile, with the flu showing up in Greece, and saving frequent flier miles for the trip here, perhaps the best medicine is prevention, at least that's what one of my friends is hoping.

``Following the adage `birds of a feather flock together,' I'm avoiding all birds, not just chickens and such, even though I don't really come across any live ones, '' she said. ``No walking by pigeons, no feeding those little eensy brown birds that live in the hedge, and I crossed the street because a seagull landed on a lamp post next to me.''

And while on the other side of the street, she noticed a great bag in a discount store and hustled right in, all worries forgotten.

Flu, schmu.