the flu report

I don't know if you've been sick, but odds are you know someone who's had some flu/bronchial thing in the past few weeks. My office, my roommate, me, loads of people around have all had the flu and/or some sort of bronchial infection. And I just found this flu report through The Weather Channel web site. According to the report, the flu is "widespread" all over the country, INCLUDING Alaska and Hawaii. However, it's only regional in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, Delaware, Louisiana, and Alabama. Only two of these states border each other.

[breaking blog moment: some girl in Cambridge just said something obnoxious about Yale... on a Food Network show... um, okay... whatever]

So back to IMPORTANT things.
So I go check WHO to see if the flu is widespread throughout North America, the world, or what.
And what do I find out?
There's a good sized avian flu outbreak in Egypt.
Didn't know that.

Also, apparently America's maternal mortality rate per 100000 live births is in the same category as Mexico, Russia, China, Brazil, and Libya -- in other words, behind Canada, Australia, Western Europe and Japan. Hell, Greenland has a better rate.

So I checked out the Canadian flu report. It's high, but not as high as ours.

And that's what I've learned so far. I'll report back if I find anything else comforting and/or distressing.