VITAL HEALTH ALERT!!

The State Department of Health has determined we are not panicking enough about the West Nile Virus. Research shows that the best way to prevent the disease is to talk obsessively about it and, if possible, milk it for political advantage over elected representatives of an opposing party.

So remember: The West Nile Virus caused seven deaths in New York City last year. Admittedly, this still leaves it far behind the number there who died from, say, hypertension, alcoholism, kidney disease, or fights over a pair of sneakers. But it has moved ominously ahead of the number of people struck by a falling satellite while being run over by cattle.

And this doesn’t even take into account the segment of our population most likely affected by the virus — people who constantly have to write about it.

“Basically, it has turned my life upside down,” said Wyatt Olson, health writer for the Asbury Park Press. “It’s meant that at three o’clock in the afternoon, I’m forced to report some lame-ass story instead of what I should be doing.

“The problem is, it’s got that foreign-sounding name. Nile. If it were named ‘Down Home South Carolina virus,’ people wouldn’t care.”

But care we do. So far this year, one man in Staten Island has been confirmed to have the disease, meaning it has definitely attacked one tenth of one tenth of one tenth of one tenth of one tenth of one percent of all New Yorkers. Such a disaster could also hit New Jersey. All that has to happen is a mosquito gets the virus, which not all of them do, and it is able to pass it on, which not all of them are, and at some point bites a human being, which not every mosquito gets around to in its 10-day lifetime.

At this point, a little over 99.5 percent of all people so bitten will have the following symptoms:

a) No symptoms whatsoever

Other effects for this group include:

a) The feeling that everything is just fine
b) The usual regrets as you age
c) A long and healthy life span at the end of which you die from something unrelated

The less-than-one-half-of-one-percent who do feel any effect will have the following symptoms:

a) Flu-like fever
b) Flu-like dizziness
c) Flu-like stiffness
d) disorientation, such as one gets from, for example, the flu

So if you feel like you have the flu, make out your will immediately and tell all your snotty co-workers what you really think of them, because a few people who feel these symptoms (probably you) will become seriously ill, and of those, some (you again) will develop encephalitis, and of those, nine will live and one (you) won’t.

You should therefore take the following precautions:

a) Poison your food
b) Poison all your friends’ food
c) Pressure elected officials to spray poison at people to whose food you do not have access

Fortunately, the authorities have been quick to respond to this heinous outbreak.

“Public officials don’t want to seem not to care,” Olson reports. “So they’d cover us all with pesticides and let the chips fall where they may.”

Our brave representatives must not stand alone on this. Each of us should raise a shrill voice of unity, and demand to be pelted with Malathion. Some citizens may settle for a few simple precautions, such as keeping covered, wearing insect repellant, and getting rid of standing water on their property. But is that really a reasonable, measured response? Is it really? Well actually yes, of course it is. But is it? Really?