# 2442
Last week a good friend of mine suggested, in all seriousness, that I stop blogging about pandemic preparedness because `thoughts are things . . . and by blogging about it, you'll only make it happen'.
Had I known that I wielded that kind of power, I'd have started using it for good instead of evil years ago!
This idea, that if enough people talk (or even think) about a pandemic, it will cause one to happen, is probably more prevalent than we realize.
In the aftermath of the 1918 Spanish Flu, fears apparently ran so high over its return that for the next two decades nearly all mention of the 1918 pandemic was excluded from popular culture.
As if even mentioning it would harken its return.
In 1938, Katherine Anne Porter would publish thee short novels in a collection called Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Old Mortality, Noon Wine, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
(I've just received a copy of Pale Horse from a dear friend, and look forward to reading it. Thanks, Phil)
While the novelette Pale Horse would deal with the Spanish Flu, it didn't exactly unleash a torrent of similar works. As far as I can tell, there have been no major Hollywood movies that dealt with the 1918 pandemic.
Only in recent years, the past decade really, has the pandemic of 1918 really been openly discussed by the media, in large measure due to John Barry's book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History and the emergence of the bird flu threat.
Now, I can certainly understand that the subject of pandemics might not be everyone's cup of tea. That there are some people, like my ex-wife, who simply don't want to allow those kinds of `negative thoughts' into their lives.
But it is a pretty big leap to go from there - to thinking that if someone does think about, or talk about, pandemic preparedness - that it will bring on another pandemic.
Given the reluctance of people to `hear' the message- that everyone of us needs to be prepared for disasters, including pandemics - I have to wonder if this sort of `magical thinking' isn't the norm.
Are a good number of people reluctant to prepare because somehow they fear that by doing so they will bring on a disaster?
It would seem a likely hypothesis.
That underneath our thin veneer of 21st century rationality lies a deeper layer of 19th century superstition.
Obviously there were no bloggers in 1918, nor do I see any evidence that there were lots of people sitting around contemplating when the next pandemic would arrive.
So, at least in that case, the pandemic would seem to have occurred without aid of human `negative thought'. It just happened.
An Immaculate Infection, so to speak.
I'm also unaware of any rampant speculation about a pandemic just prior to 1957 or 1968, either. Of course, who knows what really goes on in the Ivory towers of academia?
I tried to explain to my friend how silly the whole idea was. That is was pure superstition, and that preparing for a disaster couldn't possibly induce the event to happen.
She wasn't convinced. I was, however, able to mollify her somewhat when I explained to her that I took `precautions'.
I told her that after I publish every blog, I go outside, turn around three times, and spit over my left shoulder.
Hey, I know it's silly.
But after all - when you are dealing with the lives of millions of people - you can't be too careful.
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