Swine flu is obviously the means God is using to destroy the world.

Stepped off the airplane yesterday in Recife and I threw my hands up in the air! There stood seven people, all in surgical masks; I thought we were being held up. All through the airport people had on masks. An announcement on the intercom before we got off the plane sternly ordered us “present ourselves” to a flight attendant if we had a fever over 38 degrees (celsius), were coughing or had a headache so that the Brazilian health authorities “could take proper action.”

Excuse me?

We were forced to sign a document with “full details where the Brazilian health officials can located you” in the event a catastrophic pandemic erupted. Seriously.

Upon arrival in Fortaleza, before we could leave the baggage claim, we had to give the full information to the officials again. When I blithely said I didn’t know the hotel’s phone number, they said, “look it up.” I wasn’t allowed to leave until I did. And, again, everyone was walking around in surgical masks.

The nightly news spent almost 10 minutes out of a 30 minute broadcast on it. “This just in” interruptions to normal programming to give the latest statistics of the disease’s progression occured all day on the radio.

So, it must really be bad here, huh?

Population – 225 million; swine flu – 22 cases.

Yep! This is some kinda serious malady.