The Prophercy

I don't intend to scare anyone with today's post. But I just couldn't resist the urge to blog about this after reading the newspaper this morning. Years ago, I stumbled across a little booklet, a Buddhist booklet to be exact. I can neither recall the name of the book now nor find it in my house. I remembered clearly that I'd read it before. It has a Buddhist monk in a sitted position with his index finger pointing up as though giving a warning as its cover image; the monk, obviously bald, was wearing a typical orange robe and no, no glasses.....oh wait, or maybe there was. Oh dear....*scratches head* Sigh.....just where in the world did I misplace it?

Anyway, the booklet somehow mentioned that mankind will be inflicted with a disease more deadly than AIDS and cancer. He said that there would be a certain kind of air-borne Influenza that spreads from human to human through simple gestures like hand shake. At that point, I was of course, sceptical.

"Pah!! Influenza is more deadly than AIDS??? How can a simple flu and cough kills a person?!" was what I was thinking then.

But with the current pandemic A(H1N1) spread worldwide, I can't stop thinking that maybe this is what he meant. Is this the influenza he talks about in his book? Whatever he said, was it a prophercy? I don't know...... All I know is that the latest updates of H1N1 is worrisome. With more than 75,000 cases around the world (112 cases in Malaysia alone; while in Singapore 701 cases) and no way of slowing, if not stopping it; no doubt this is a call, a warning for mankind after Influenza H5N1 (a.k.a. Bird Flu) 6 years ago.

The latest update from WHO states that there were already 332 deaths due to this virus. Below is just a map of the spread (last update 1 July 2009 09:00 GMT) extracted from WHO website. Further information can be found at this link http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_07_01a/en/index.html