Not again!

Remember the Great Swine Flu scare of 1976? Poor old President Ford could never catch a break. Somebody died of swine flu in Vermont or somewhere, and the whole U.S. health system mobilized.

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine were manufactured at taxpayer expense, thousands upon thousands of Americans were inoculated, and in the end more people died of reactions to the flu shots than from the original disease. The whole fiasco ended up as a political embarrassment.

I clearly remember drawing swine flu cartoons when I was just getting started at a small paper in Oklahoma that didn't even publish on Mondays (so that nobody would have to work on the Sabbath), and now, thirty-three years later, I find myself having to brush up on my hog anatomy all over again.

To quote Santayana, "Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." There are two lessons to be taken from this: Don't stay too long in the same dead-end job, and let somebody else be the guinea pig for that flu shot before you take the plunge.