Week 6 Martin

In chapter 5 of Eating Animals, Safran Foer talks about the "Spanish flu" which was one of the worst pandemics that the world has ever experienced. In 24 weeks, the flu killed 24 million people. It is estimated that 50 to 100 million people died from it and that a quarter of the entire world fell ill from it. The flu not only killed the young and the old but it was also killing healthy people in the prime of their lives. At the height of the flu, Americans average life expectancy dropped to 37 years and it is estimated that 20,000 Americans were dying each week. Safran Foer starts the section off with some gruesome statistics of an awful pandemic that happened in 1918; then he drops the bomb about some health authorities fear the same thing is going to happen again because of the H5N1 virus. I think this was a huge logical fallacy on Safran Foer's part because I strongly believe that if authorities thought we were on the verge of another giant pandemic, they would be doing something about it stop it from happening. I believe this was a scare tactic by Safran Foer to get people to join his position. If we truly were on the brink of another deadly pandemic, authorities would not just warn us about it but they would take actions to prevent it. That is true logic. Safran Foer did a good job of connecting the two but I just don't buy what he's selling.