Swine and Dandy

This weekend is the date for the 2009 Young Voices Festival. This is a state-wide choral festival for kids in grades four through nine. Kids audition earlier in the year, and if they make it they go to Auburn University for the festival. There are four choirs made up of kids from all over the state. They rehearse music they've been working on for months and a final concert is performed on Saturday afternoon. Many kids and choir directors look forward to this event. It got cancelled this year due to fears of swine flu outbreak. Are you kidding me? I just don't get it. Perhaps I'm ill informed, but I don't see what the big deal is! To me, it seems like the media has caused a global frenzy over this virus that is causing people to panic. Now, on one hand, I can see why an event like Young Voices would be a dangerous situation for an airborne virus (tons of kids sitting next to each other for hours breathing all over each other.) I'm just not convinced that this H1N1 "swine flu" is all that big of a deal. How is it any different or more dangerous than the regular flu? People have been getting the flu all over the world for years. I really feel sorry for the kids. There are hundreds of kids all across the state of Alabama that spent hours practicing music and looking forward to a trip that they aren't getting to take. It's a shame. I was only going to take four kids. But some schools take forty, fifty kids. Oh well. Better luck next year, I suppose. Never in a million years did I think that something like this would be cancelled by something called "swine flu". Stupid pigs.