Swine Flu and the WSOP

I have to admit to being a pretty bad TV news junkie. I probably watch a minimum of three hours of television news a day while I play my little Full Tilt tournaments. I know it probably isn't good to rely on television for your news as it is usually biased, sensational and often ignores some of the most important issues.

I admit I enjoyed the bias in favor of Obama durring the elections, but the television news has certainly made the recession a little worse, and now they are trying to freak everyone out over the swine flu. This will probably wind up hurting the turnout for the WSOP whether or not a single poker player gets the sniffles.

I saw a couple of people at Trader Joes here in Vegas wearing surgical masks yesterday. Can you imagine what the WSOP is going to look like this year? Are there going to be more masks than sunglasses? I guess we can assume Joe Bidden and his family won't be comming, they wont even get on a plane.

Hopefully all the hysteria will have blown over by the start of the series. If you have an impaired immune system I can understand precautions, I would probably always wear a mask when I played poker, no matter what the flu de jour was, if that were the case. Lets face it those chips are filthy and most of us have a hard time remembering not to touch our face while we play. I try not to.

I predict it starts out a little slow and if there isn't an outbreak the last part will be unaffected. I personally have almost no concern over the virus itself at this point.