Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Dept. of Pre-Blogging: Swine Flu edition

In no particular order, your friendly neighborhood Dept. of Pre-blogging hereby predictively reports on:

  • Increased speculation, coupled with a spike in Twitter activity.
  • Politicization of the event from the Right (blame Mexico and/or Big Government), the Left (if we spent money in the right places, this would not happen), and out in left field (this is actually the result of an experiment by the CIA/NSA/World Bank/Freemasons/etc).
  • Rapid adoption of irrational coping mechanisms, perhaps including a run on N95 respirators and surface disinfectants.
  • Reassuring releases from the Pork Council that in addition to being the Other White Meat(tm), yummy bacon cannot transmit influenza unless it has previously been used as a handkerchief.
  • An upcoming Schneier blog item on swine flu hysteria being related to confirmation bias.