Just one question: Am I going to die?

I've been ill. Not exactly at Death's door, perhaps more like at the end of the cul-de-sac where Death lives. Death Close. But regardless of my proximity to Death and/or his door, I spent the vast majority of two days sleeping off the effects of my stomach and head trying to outdo each other with the amount of pain and discomfort they could cause me.

So while wallowing in my state of illness/self-pity, my mind turned to Swine Flu which is now, officially, a global pandemic. It's strange that the overall feeling towards this GLOBAL PANDEMIC is one of mild confusion and indifference. Although at the same time it's hardly surprising when the media through which we are meant to recieve level-headed informal news on important issues such as this, has become so caught up in sensationalism over the past decade we now no longer know what to believe.

Well, take your pick:

The BBC, that British bastion of independent journalism, seems to be flitting all over the place. One minute we have Paxman wheeled out to grill some World Health Organisation official about what exactly is being done to prevent the spread; wanting to know insane levels of detail like how many vaccines have been produced to the nearest dozen at that precise second in time, which automatically gets me all worked up. If Paxman is worried, should I be worried?

Meanwhile the boffs in the BBC Online News department, seemingly affected by being holed up in the basement of BBC HQ, have gone all morbid and graphic producing some kind of interactive DEATH GRAPH showing where all the people have died from the virus, when they died and how old they were when they died. Pie charts, world maps and pull-down boxes, all full of DEATH STATS and things like that, just to keep everyone at ease. Cheers.

Big, cuddly Fern Britton and ever-tanned Philip Schofield on GMTV managed to interview a virologist 'on the sofa' in terms so dumbed-down the families featured on Jeremy Kyle would have felt patronised, had they been watching and not sleeping with their brothers' wives while selling crack to kids etc. All I managed to get out of that exchange was to wipe tables if people sneeze on them. I should hope people do that anyway to be honest.

The papers have managed to report on the story with a finely balanced angle of ambiguity and scare-mongering, with the Daily Mail reporting how fine public elementary schools have had to be shut down because of those dirty Mexicans, leaving swathes of posh kids missing literally hours of education and having to put up with horrific sniffles. And The Sun just has just resorted to telling us which celebrities are stupid enough to ring them and explain their fears of being struck down by the virus, in the absence of having that many British deaths to actually report on.

Even the World Heath Organisation itself hasn't helped matters particulary with it's overdramatic 'phase' system for measuring severity. Everyone can read off a sheet which explains what each 'phase' means, but it essentially just instills images of 28 Days Later in people's minds when they hear words like 'PHASE 6 PANDEMIC'.

What phase are we in now? And what phase do we need to get to before I start shooting pigs and stop talking to people, even down telephone wires, for fear of transmitting this disease. This disease which, and the clue is in the name, is in effect a bad case of flu.

I just don't know what to think. I'll stick with the masses and just continue making jokes about it until we're all quarantined and shipped onto offshore floating prisons to create a new sub-race of infected beings.