SWINE FLU

The World Health Organization has recently raised the level of Swine Flu to the little known and used ‘Mega Pandemic’ level. This is the fifth time in a month that the World Health organization has raised the warning level for Swine Flu, or H1N1 as it’s now referred to as. Earlier this month, the Swine flu has gone through multiple classification changes, going from ‘Pre Pandemic’, ‘Demi Pandemic’ to ‘Pretty Much a Pandemic’ to ‘Pandemic Pandemic’ and now ‘Mega Pandemic’. “It’s important that we keep the public up-to-date about the Swine Flu,” Said World Health Organization spokesperson Craig Samuelson, “Plus it’s pretty good publicity for us. People pay attention when they hear the word ‘Pandemic’. For example, in one press release, we mentioned the word ‘Pandemic’ over 50 times. We think that with all the hard work we do, we deserve a little bit more government cheese, and you do that by making people care about you.”

The World Health Organization has been wildly successful with their Swine Flu campaign, capturing tons of worldwide headlines by renaming the disease, classifying it with many different frightening warnings and even creating a new H1N1 mascot called “Oinker” to help integrate themselves into the children’s market. “What they’ve done is absolutely brilliant.” Said Marketing Analyst Suzanne Prichard, “They’ve re-vamped their organization from a boring, sterile group of scientists into a hip, headline-capturing marketing force. People are scared stiff about this Swine Flu thing, and they’ve used that to their full advantage. Nobody is asking ‘who are WHO?’ anymore, or ‘what is WHO?’, but now the questions are more like ‘Why is WHO doing this?’. They’ve really broken into the 5-W market. That’s what we in marketing like to call the ‘money cow’ or in this case, the ‘money pig’!” She said before laughing uncontrolably and stomping her feet against the ground.

Citizens have been less enthusiastic, especially in the Hypochondriac community. Steven Malkakis has been a hypochondriac his entire life, and he believes he is suffering from a wide assortment of assorted maladies on a daily basis. We interviewed him over the phone. “It’s fucking bullshit. I’ve been afraid to leave my house for weeks. I’ve taken 5 Xanaxes today and I’m still afraid to do anything other than lie in bed and look at tenticle porn on the internet. I’m just dreading the day they update the level to ‘I am Legend Pandemic’. I think I’d just kill myself if that happened; that was a really stupid movie.”

The WHO is working on new methods of prolonging their newfound stardom. “Listen, we know that this Swine Flu thing isn’t going to last forever.” Samuelson beamed, “So we’ve undertaken new steps on how to find the next up-and-coming disease to promote. The bird flu was a big flop for us, and SARS was a flash in the pan. Identifying a real winner is hard, but we’re working on it. We’ve found some sexy stuff recently, in the Amazon we found a type of herpes you can get from an iguana, and in Chile there’s an intestinal worm that spreads through sneezing. Now that we’ve got the marketing side figured out, I think these guys could be big news in only a matter of years!”