Flu Jobs (Not "jabs"; "jobs")
WARNING: This blog may NOT be considered in good taste by everyone. Hell, I wrote it and even I am beginning to think it is in bad taste. I blame Girls Aloud, it was whilst thinking of them that the notion came to me. I don’t know why.
So… ready? Ok. This one is called “Swine flu and the job market…”
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not being frivolous here; I’m being practical. The word on the street is “Big Issue, Please?” … hold on, wait… nope, wrong rant… the word in New Scientist was that if Swine flu lived up to it’s ancestral sibling (?), Spanish Flu, we could be looking at anywhere between 25 and 33 percent…um… shortfall (?) in the population… (Unlike Chimney Flu which only burnt up 2 percent of the population last year. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ahhhh. *cough* It’s not funny really… sorry.)
Anyway, this got me to thinking…;
If such a huge loss to the working population were to happen, amongst the business continuity plans that are being hastily contrived how many of those plans include the possibility that some jobs are, maybe, superfluous? Like “Weather Forecasters” for example? We could re-deploy these useless buggers elsewhere (to be street cleaners, for example, but not in a “bring out yer dead” python-esque manner because that would be gruesome and fear-mongering upon such an emotive subject and denigrate what I am trying to achieve here. Don’t ask what it is that I am trying to achieve here as I do not know; the music was on and I started typing… what else did you want from me? Enlightenment? Sheesh. ) and replace their oft-lying diatribe with a poster that just says “changeable”.
There are so many other jobs that could be considered “luxury” ill-afforded by a post-apocalyptic society. Such as “sports commentators”, “Jeremy Clarkson’s Political Correctness Advisor” (a post that has, thankfully, been seemingly vacant for some time now) and “Policemen” (a post that has been seemingly vacant for some time now…) but what other posts can be considered such? And bear in mind that when you do retire the job, any vacant positions’ vacant occupier’s need to be usefully employed elsewhere.
Discuss.
Ez
17 Comments
I don't remember that bit - but Douglas Adams' point is bloody well made (and very funny). Sadly Swine Flu is less discerning and far too indiscriminate ("indiscriminate" adj: Criminals are unlikely to get it...) to repeat that exercise but with a less ironic outcome.
I would offer you my job as I rarely use it but the pay sucks, my female colleagues don't and I'm sitting in a corridor with the window open because air conditioning is not a revenue generating item.
Not really, but when has that ever stopped me?
Maryluv, I'm sorry to hear about your Mr Maryluv, but at least when it mutates he will have a better chance of survival.
Our hospital has plans drawn up to be converted into a complete ITU, the 80 beds and offices being turned into a 100 bedded ITU. I'm really looking forward to winter :) yay me
It's a good thought Jak and, if I’m not mistaken, many people have the same idea in mind.
Consider this, however; the virus mutates because it finds a host environment that is conducive to mutation. Ergo; the more people with Flu the more likely it will find that condition to mutate into something insidious. The current thinking is; isolate the ill and reduce the opportunities for the virus to find that devilish advocate. Also exposure to an early strain is no guarantee of immunity; what if the mutation is not just “payload” but also “protein bindings”? In which case your immune system won’t recognise the new bugger and all your suffering would have been for nowt. Could happen; unlikely but you just never know.
My method? Avoid large crowds, as found in shopping centres and, for example, football matches. When forced, by starvation or fanaticism, to attend either of the above then wear a disposable paper mask – for the duration of the exposure only! Dispose of mask when free from crowd – and at the first sign of relatives in distress, disown them and prod them away from the house with a shotgun poked through the letter box accompanied by some pithy saying such as “get orf moi land”. Clichéd? Probably. But I would rather survive clichéd than die in the knowledge that it was a pox-ridden EzSibling that gave me terminal sweats, shivers, vomiting, diarrhoea and the cessation of essential activities such as breathing and/or living.
Or – as I am doing – lobbying my MP for the big Pharma stranglehold on corrupt fiscal distributors to be exposed to neat ultra-violent solar particles and stripped away from existence whilst pushing for the fast-tracking of human trials for a new series of panacea-ic solutions that care not a jot for the lollipop protein mushrooms that prickle the skin of a pathogen and hunts instead for the signals that indicate a cell has been violated, whereupon it terminates-with-extreme-prejudice said infected cell and buggers off looking for more Arnie-action. But I may have mis-read the article to be honest. After all, we all tend to read what we want to read, n’est ce pas?
Now, what was the non-essential jobsworth that you thought could do with being re-distributed?
:o)
Ez
Don't worry; no one takes any notice of these blogs of mine.
:o)
:o)
You are quite incorrect!
Granted, once damp they provide the perfect environment for any virus *you already have* to breed like buggery and that dampness is pretty much created when you first breathe out!
BUT
Despite the flu virus being of so small a size it can pass straight through if it wanted, there is something to be said about the numbers; the majority of incoming blighters (remember you do not have flu yet, but some anti-social git nearby does have it and has just sneezed into the air) will encounter and be snagged by the fibres in the mask thus reducing your intake quantity. And as the immune system is numbers sensitive, there is the thought that it will help. And, if I’m not mistaken, 3M do a face mask that will last 6 months. Granted it’s £3,500 a mask but that’s not the point…
Besides… wearing a mask makes me feel like I’m *doing* something. It’s like I’m making a positive action which is far less frustrating than waiting for the damn curse to take me whilst praying that Lady Luck is on my side.
Why can I not trust in a thin piece of paper? Is there not a serious medical question about the healing power of positive thinking? Hand me a tube of Smarties and say “one-a-day and the flu will stay away” and I shall be charged up with the miracle that is “placebo”. Give me some hope, something to cling to, please.
So, it may be a useless piece of paper to you but to me, having been wearing one now for twenty years and having never caught rabies, it is a damn good medical panacea.
And another thing… if we made wearing a mask compulsory, ugly people would no longer be shunned. And I’m all for that.
Did you forget to humorously list jobs that you considered to be expendable? Hmm?
Ez
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