Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

TSA workers are going to be searching bags on the subway in New York City, according to this unsettling report by MyFoxNY.com. Here’s the deal: NYPD is short on cops, so the TSA guys would free up some officers to go above ground, the story says.

Let’s think about this. What was the point of having cops search bags on the subway to begin with? Oh yeah, deterrence. Because after all, there’s no chance there will ever be enough cops (or TSA workers or squeegee guys) to actually find a ticking needle in a haystack.

So the upside was deterrence. And the downside? Well, that was freedom, of course--freedom from being stopped and having your personal property groped by lawmen on your way to work. I actually thought that was a reasonable trade, given the high risk of a subway bombing.

But that’s because I had faith that the guys doing the groping were trained police who understood the complicated ecosystem that is New York City. NYPD understands terrorism better than most law enforcement types, and that includes much of the FBI.

Now, I’m not saying the best detectives were down there searching bags on the F train (at least I hope they weren’t). But whoever was searching bags belonged to an organization that, while flawed in important ways, I basically sort of almost trust.

Not so with TSA. Nothing against TSA employees--who are generally hard-working, polite and underpaid. But they are not nearly as well trained as police officers. At airports, they search everyone, more or less. They aren’t expected to use their discretion to find the narrow line between reasonable searching and profiling.

And what about the upside? Well, since TSA employees don’t carry weapons, can’t arrest anyone and aren’t particularly well-respected, they won’t act as much of a deterrent, either.

So what are we left with? Carry the 2 and add the 3… Let’s see: Less deterrence, less freedom. Lose-Lose.

(Thanks to a loyal reader for the heads up on this.)

According to CNN, swine flu was mentioned in some capacity in about 2 percent of all Twitter posts Monday. Everyone has something to say, from the serious CDC twitter account to the not-so serious musings of the average American. 

It may be a little early to tell how effective--or diabolical--Twitter will be in disseminating chatter about the flu, but there’s no debating the power of the web to monitor the muses of the masses.  In fact, Seattle-based company, Veratect, claims to have alerted the CDC to the flu situation in Mexico by observing social media trends. 

Five months after 9/11, two military jets shrieked across the scarred island of Manhattan at 4:30 am. I remember it well. My eyes jerked open, as the windows, the dishes, and my heart shook in place in my tiny Upper West Side apartment. Then I did what we always did those days whenever weird things happened: I went into the other room and turned on CNN. I waited for my editor to call and send me downtown, just as he had on 9/11. But nothing happened. I waited and waited, watching the ladies sell shiny earrings on the shopping network until sunrise.

It turned out that it was all a mistake--whoops!--two F-16s returning from a routine patrol, the newspapers said the next day. I was pissed. To this day, I would love to get those air jockeys in a room and explain the implications of ripping several million people from sleep back into the daylight of our collective trauma. Bravo Zulu.

Actually, that room I’ve got reserved for this fantasy rant has been filling up ever since. Yesterday’s idiotic flyover by the backup Air Force One jet was possibly the most boneheaded maneuver, but the competition is fierce (see short list below).

What is it about the FAA or the military or the Gods that allows this to keep happening? How can people repeatedly fail to understand what it does to a population to replay the very sounds and sights that accompanied a slaughter of thousands in the not so distant past? What is hard about this?

Perhaps the most alarming thing about the Air Force One fiasco was that it was planned and announced in advance to several agencies--with an order to keep it SECRET. This, to me, stinks to holy hell. I have talked a lot in the past about people in charge not trusting the public--and the devastation that follows. This is a classic bureaucratic move.

But I’d still love to hear the justification. What? Were they worried someone would shoot down a backup Air Force One jet--that wasn’t carrying the president? That seems like a risk worth taking, friends. Instead, what could have been a lovely publicity moment--carefully announced in advance via NYC’s high-saturation media outlets and email alert system--turned into an honest-to-God trauma for many, many people. People whose brains are wired to respond to every flyover as if it is an act of war, because that’s just how the brain works.

Let’s hope we don’t have to add to this hall of shame for a long while:

1. April 27, 2009: Backup Air Force One jet buzzes the Statue of Libery’s left ear and loops around a couple more times as photographers aboard an accompanying F-16 take snapshots. “Defies imagination,” says Mayor Bloomberg.

2. October 3, 2004: Two massive Marine Corps C-130 transport planes buzz the Statue of Libery and Ground Zero around 2:30 pm, with clearance from local air-traffic controllers.

3. May 14, 2003: A Continental Airlines jumbo jet carrying troops home from Iraq buzzes the Statue of Liberty before veering into the center of midtown Manhattan at 8:30 in the morning. Says Bloomberg, who had been given only a two-minute warning from the FAA, “One would expect a little more concern, sensitivity and notice.”

4. Feb. 18, 2002: Two Air Force F-16s buzz Manhattan at 4:30 am. Shortly afterward, both pilots are shipped back to their home base in Texas.

YOU GOTTA LOVE A POTENTIAL PANDEMIC WITH A NAME LIKE SWINE flu. Takes no prisoners. Very old world.

But so far, the reporting on swine flu has been very new world: reactionary, shallow and lacking context. That’s a shame since context is all that really matters in this story.

So let’s break it down:

The Numbers:

The numbers are not impressive unto themselves so far. About 20 cases in the U.S., with no deaths and only one hospitalization. That number will go up as everyone starts paying more attention--and identifying more cases. But for now, this is a pretty mild flu in the U.S. (By comparison, about 36,000 people die of regular flu-related causes in the U.S. each year.)

In Mexico, the numbers are more dramatic--although no one really knows what they are yet. The process of identifying the specific strain is maddeningly slow. But it’s safe to say that there has been a significant uptick in the number of serious pneumonia cases, and most of the patients identified so far appear to be under 50. So the strain in Mexico seems to be much more virulent, and no one really knows why yet.

Why This Matters:

The reason why all of this matters--and why the U.S. has declared a public health emergency--have to do with the behavior of the virus. So the numbers are not the main event, even though the media will obsess over the numbers (because what else is there to do?).

OK, so to put this in context: we are all waiting around for a pandemic flu to hit. Or we should be. In the past 100 years, Americans have endured three pandemics—in 1918, 1957 and 1968. As the American Public Health Association puts it, “We’re overdue for another pandemic. It’s not a question of if, but when.”

What is a pandemic flu? And does it look like this?

A pandemic flu is different from the regular flu. A pandemic flu happens when a new virus spreads around the world, causing serious illness and spreading easily from one human to another. It’s a big deal because it can kill many thousands of people (and shut down economies).

So that hasn’t happened yet here, and it probably won’t. But swine flu is worrisome for two reasons.

First, this is a new virus. It has genetic characteristics not seen in U.S. swine flu before. This matters because it means we don’t have a lot of immunity to this virus.

Second, this flu is spreading without contact with swine. That is alarming because it means it could be very efficient in moving through communities of humans. BUT it is not the first time swine flu has spread without any swine involvement.

What does any of this have to do with pigs?

Pigs are a nasty petri dish for flu because they can get both bird and human strains of flu. That means they can then act as a test tube for creating brand new viruses--to which we humans have no immunity.

Are we all going to die?

No. Well, yes, eventually. But for now, we just don’t know if this is the much-awaited Big One. A useful literature review from 2007 found a 14% fatality rate in past cases of swine flu. Whether that means anything about this strain, we don’t know. (By comparison, during the worst week of the 2007-2008 season, the regular flu had a mortality rate of about 9%.)

We do know that it appears to be receptive to drugs, which is great news. The sooner you get on these drugs after you get sick, the better. And a vaccine may be possible, but it will take at least a few months, according to the CDC.

What are the symptoms?

Same as a regular flu--fever, cough, chills, sore throat, aches, pain, general misery. Possibly vomiting or nausea.

What can we do?

Sounds simple but it can make all the difference: Wash your hands--and take your time. Cover your mouth when you sneeze. Stay home if you are sick. If you are the boss of other humans, encourage them to stay home if they are sick.

Two sites with the most useful information so far:

Clinicians’ Biosecurity Network (run by the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center)

CDC Swine Flu Investigation