Panic first, think later...

On the face of it I have all the outward appearances of a calm, with it, relaxed modern mum. But there, bubbling away under the surface lies a fiery risk-obsessed, neurotic, hypochondriac, psycho mum with serious ‘people who park in mother and baby spots’ anger issues.
Take for example swine flu. I got a card in the post this week instructing me to take my two youngest children to the health centre and have them vaccinated against it.
Now, working for years in the media has left me rather sceptical on pretty much everything. My first thought wasn’t to thank the Lord that my kids will not catch the dreaded swine flu. Instead my crazed mind felt that they were only getting this jab because the government bought so much of the stuff that they needed to get rid of it. And what better way than to inject it into little kids?
I blame a certain Mr Television for warping my brain.
Now I know that many people have tragically died from swine flu already, a lot of them young children, many of them with underlying medical conditions. My fear is that by using these few heartbreaking cases, the media are whipping up a storm to panic the rest of us into injecting chemicals into our kids, the side effects of which we wont know for years.
See there, the above comment is proof positive of the risk-obsessed side of my personality.
It’s my own fault. I watch unhealthy amounts of much 24-hour news. Since the swine flu story became news I have flicked between the constantly updating channels, which told us over the course of a few weeks…
1. We are ALL going to DIE of swine flu!!
2. No, wait, all your little children are going to die of swine flu!!!
3. No, hold on there, there’s a vaccine, but you’re not getting it so you’re still all going to DIE!
4. No, wait up, you can have the vaccine, but we haven’t tested it yet so it might be rather dangerous and it could cause you to DIE!!
5. If you haven’t already died from all the stress inflicted by panic-inducing news stories (or indeed from bird or swine flu) hold your horses, there’s another pandemic just around the corner that will definitely cause you to DIE!
Now when the bird flu panic washed over the O’Neill household a few years ago I was on the frontline of panic stations until the husband took over. If you recall my first line of defence was to instruct the husband to dig a big hole in the garden in which we could all hide. Then my orders where to station himself on the roof of the house (while we hid in the big hole) with a yard brush to scare, maim or kill any feverish feathered creatures that might happen to fly by.
His advice then was similar to now. His instructions were thus and were to be followed to the letter.
1. Switch off the TV
2. Wise up, shut up
3. Make him a cup of tea.