Your money or your life?
Lately with this whole flu thing, I'm thinking "life." And I'm thinking this week, I'm not alone.
A lot more folks panicking about getting sick than getting stocks.
It's true. Trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange has been lower than normal this week. Maybe because so many of us are feeling weak. That's what happens when an epidemic takes hold: Priorities take hold as well.
Suddenly you're not so much interested in making a killing, as not getting killed; not dying to make a profit, just not dying.
I don't mean to be flip, just relaying how our perspective has flipped.
Doctors I know say this flu thing isn't as bad as it seems, just a cruel confluence of events like nothing we've seen -- or at least nothing we've seen in years.
What concerns a lot of medical experts is their expert advice isn't panning out.
"Take the shot and you'll be fine."
Problem is for a one out of three patients taking that flu shot, they're not fine. They're getting the flu or, more to the point, a different flu than that shot was meant to address anyway.
And it worries them. And increasingly panics them.
That doesn't mean this is a contagion. More like a time for what I call panicked reflection. Where we make sure those we love are OK and get our priorities right and tell our bosses, "No, not OK. I'm not coming in today." As one very flu-ridden buddy of mine told me, from his tissue-filled bed at home: "Neil, I'm too sick to think my boss is getting hot and bothered that I'm not there."
He needn't worry. I understand today his boss wasn't there either.
Who knew? Some flu.
Get well. Be well.
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