Anyone sick of hearing about Swine Flu yet?

If there's one thing that's truly annoyed me this week, there has been a lot to annoy me, but we'll stick with the "public health" story that I imagine everyone has been hearing about ad nauseam, Swine Flu - sigh.

While there are some interesting facts about Swine Flu, like the fact that the people most at risk are those in supposedly peak physical condition - the age group of 20 to 40 - and the fact we're one of the first in the world to have an "outbreak" of it, we were even mentioned on Fox News - yay! The fact still remains that this flu isn't as scary as those in the media would have us believe. Remember S.A.R.S? Remember Bird Flu? Remember how many people actually died from those "super-flus," well neither do I, but after talking to a particularly scientifically minded friend of mine I learned some facts that will either scare, or fill you with some sort of glee: more people die from the common cold in the world then from new, funky, hip, cool, super-flus. A thousand or more people die in the United States from the common cold every year - I can't remember the exact figures given to me so you'll have to Google it yourself but we're in the ballpark though - and so considering that in NZ we've only had two actual confirmed cases of Swine Flu, one has to think that now we're aware of this new flu, the actual danger of it is very low - sure wash your hands and don't eat from rubbish bins - but there is a real question that needs to be asked, as it is something much more serious, much more life altering, and it hasn't even been thought about yet: how high is the price of bacon going to rise?

Surely with the pigs being eradicated overseas the demand for bacon is going to rise and we as an export minded country will be exporting more bacon, perhaps making bacon scarce at your local foodtown, maybe the weekend bacon and eggs at a cafe is going to become even more expensive. I wonder if it's time to invest in some pork commodities on the share market.