I have seen updates about the Swine Flu in the last few days…and none of it told me about how serious, or how “deadly” it is. But as far as “deadliness” goes, thousands of people die from the normal flu every year…and I don’t fret about that, but that’s not my big issue here.
I searched “How dangerous is the swine flu”, and stumbled upon this link: Swine Flu Q&A. Since they required me to make a livejournal account just to comment (which is bad form if you are trying to foster discussion. I don’t need another membership, I just want to speak my mind), I decided to respond here.
Back to the article; here’s my response:
I am sick of seeing stuff about the swine flu on the internet and Television and it being Doom and Gloom, to quote the article: “in 1918, when 20 to 40 million people died.” Fleming didn’t even discover Penicillin until 1928. Other inflated language above would be the response regarding Vitamin C: “They are about as useful as a water pistol against a forest fire.” A simple, “No this won’t help much.” would do just fine. This all seems like Hype to me.
Is this really what we want? People being terrified of this thing (that they don’t seem to be able to defend against) and causing an unnecessary state of fear? Don’t we have enough to worry about already? Or is this a good thing to distract us from the fact that our economy is in the tank? One thing is for sure. This inflammatory fear-mongering is for the birds (and not the ones with the flu).
Get serious journalists…do your job. And people, if you don’t get info telling you it’s deadly AND imminent, don’t worry about it. There’s little you can do anyway.