Planet Waves astrology blog has had some interesting columns (at least imo) touching on the swine flu created panic. here are a few excerpts so please click though to read the entire column...
Wag the PigIn an interesting
lowdown from the ABC (kind of like the BBC, only American) the writers demonstrate a history of pandemic-esque circumstances and our collective tendency toward panic. it seems that when the big boys cry wolf, anxiety sets in so much that we remain essentially unsure whether to ignore it, pat it or shoot it.
We reported yesterday that the dubious corporation Baxter stands to make a lot of money from this whole situation, despite well-reported prior negligence where the health of the public is concerned. For big pharmaceuticals it’s business as usual — or, perhaps, unusual. With probable boosts in profit from anti-swine medicine, a number of drug companies’ share prices went up significantly this week, particularly Gilead Sciences, manufacturer of Tamiflu. (Gilead, in case you were wondering, was where Rummy used to make big, responsible decisions before becoming Bush’s number one defense lackey, and the co-inventor of that brilliant thing known as Iraq.)
Gilead shares would no doubt explode in the event of a pandemic: the FDA has just created measures for
Tamiflu to be broadly dispensed in an emergency — even to children under the age of 1, which goes against requirements of the drug’s own label. The problem with Tamiflu is that it’s ineffective unless used within 48 hours after exposure, that is to say, considerably before symptoms have appeared. So what do you do, take it every day? As a supplement? A prophylactic?
SNIP
Ultimately, it’s very noticeable how after consuming the plate for the past few weeks, pesky economic issues and things like
torture memos have suddenly and very rapidly fallen by the wayside. Maybe we’re dealing with our first major case of ‘Wag the Pig’. As usual, the ever-faithful
Onion reports promotes some healthy perspective.
Individual and collective growth, here and nowMercury in Gemini can be pretty gosh darned slippery and tricksterish, and now we’re going to have him/her/it slow to a station there, making a quincunx to Pluto and a trine to the North Node. Given the surge of vital force (i.e., sex energy) that is spouting at this time, and the way we are trained to convert that to fear, we may be in for an interesting ride on the back of a pig. Note, this is not the normal time of year to be talking about death. It is springtime here in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s time to be frolicking in the fields and forests, flirting your head off and sniffing the pretty people as they walk by.
snip
There is a good bit of skepticism going around about this current flu “news.” True enough, plenty of people will gladly herd themselves into boxcars to get some kind of flu shot, so this is an excellent exercise in why it’s a good idea to think for yourself.
However, something else is going on, which is we are getting a sense of how frail the world can seem, and how intense the lurking threat of death is just below the veil of normal waking awareness. Combine that with someone’s agenda to make a killing off of a new vaccine and you can get a dangerous combination, but it’s only dangerous when we don’t think for ourselves.
It’s fair to call this whole episode an emergence of the shadow of death. Most of us don’t want to consider death consciously, so then when something happens that threatens us (terrorism, a sneezing pig) the result can be pandemic panic. Oh Pan, oh Pan, wherefore art thou?
We have to have this conversation; we need to give death a voice, but not some haircut on CNN freaking us out about the flu.
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