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Widespread panic

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Illinois

* Thank you, Gov. Quinn, for your common sense advice on not listening to the idiotic swine flu hysteria…

This grotesque media and political overreaction ought to serve as a valuable lesson to us all.

If media sources that you normally trust grossly overreacted and helped feed the panic out of ignorance or in order to bring attention to themselves, then you’ve now hopefully learned that your trust was horribly misplaced. Don’t believe them again.

And the same goes for politicians who screamed and wailed about closing the Mexican border (as if that was possible), or staying off trains or whatnot. Morons.

Yes, H1N1 has a past history of horrific problems. It wiped out thousands of people during World War I. So, any outbreak should obviously be handled with extreme care and media attention is deserved. But the simplistic overreaction to a handful of tragic deaths in a dirt poor region of a very poor country with a lack of both clean water and any real health care infrastructure was just disgusting from the get-go…

As dust begins to settle from the swine flu crisis, some health officials here say the pandemic grew from hype and hysteria. In the past 10 days, Americans have rushed into emergency rooms, bought out medications and glued themselves to the news for updates on H1N1. […]

“This is absolutely an overreaction,” said Dr. Rene Santos, infectious disease specialist at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. “We see 36,000 deaths in the United States a year from influenza and its complications yet we don’t have the same amount of hype and alarm.”

No doubt, this was and still remains a serious story and it deserves serious reporting. Instead, we mostly got Bizarro World craziness.

The Sun-Times tried some rationalization today…

Feared pandemics that prove to be slower moving and less deadly than predicted, such as the swine flu scare of 1976 and the SARS scare of 2003, always look overhyped in the rearview mirror.

Actually, they looked overhyped to many in real time.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:09 am

Comments

So would we call the money the Gov is throwing at the swine flu pork spending?

Comment by Ghost Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:15 am
Segue..

http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2009/05/05/ap-state-il/d9803d502.txt

Comment by Anonymous Coward Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:16 am
On TV especially, there’s too much media, very little content and virtually no real analysis — so the same stories cycle over and over again, building on themselves whether they’re newsworthy or not.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:22 am
Funniest website I saw last week:

http://doihaveswineflu.org

Comment by Concerned Observer Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:25 am
I agree, Wordslinger . But I thought the most egregious local violator was Huffpo Chicago. “Lurid” is the word I would use to describe their grotesque hype.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:28 am
I prefer nonstop swine flu to nonstop susan boyle.

Comment by Greg Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:28 am
How did the pig get to the top of the Hancock building?

Oh, never mind.

Comment by BigDog Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:30 am
Rich, I checked them out a couple of times a while back, but wasn’t compelled to return.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:36 am
What do you mean overhyped?
I have emptied my savings, cashed in my 401K, quit my job and will leave on a luxury vacation tonight. I thought mankind was going to be wiped out by the end of May?
Next you will tell me pro wrestling isn’t real!

Comment by Hank Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:39 am
=== the same stories cycle over and over again, building on themselves whether they’re newsworthy or not. ===

In other Words, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

Comment by Ghost Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 9:43 am
A return to normalcy! Now things will merely be blown out of proportion!

Comment by Louis G. Atsaves Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 10:01 am
Just another lesson on how many stories are overhyped and overblown.

Does anyone recall the fairy tale of the little boy who cried wolf? What will the reaction be from the public the next time? It could be fare more dire, but the response will be more ho hum.

Comment by Plutocrat03 Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 10:16 am
I wonder what stunt Rod would have come up with. After purchasing that bad flu vaccine a few years ago, I’m sure he would have had some trick up his sleeve that only would have made matters worse.

Comment by Lincoln Parker Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 10:48 am
If only Rod was Governor, he could purchase millions of dollars of expired swine flu vacines, stage multiple press conferences all to make him appear as our saviour.

Comment by Brian Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 11:00 am
Rich, you’re the only other source I’ve seen that is really calling the media on how they bungled this story. The story - implicit or direct - was that there was a serious threat from this flu that deserved a hysterical depiction. That was false, and really merits a retraction from the media that promoted it that way. Thanks for drawing attention to that fact.

Comment by Thomas Westgard Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 11:58 am
Now if Oprah would stop deluding people with nonsense from Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Phil, etc…
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/04/oprah-drinks-the-antivax-kool-aid/

Comment by ShyBoy Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 3:19 pm
All the same, public health experts (whom I have no reason to believe are not credible) have been warning for a few years that we’re overdue for another flu pandemic. It seems at this point like this might not be the one they were warning about, but just because the little boy cries wolf in error doesn’t mean that there is no wolf.

I would much rather have public officials be seen in retrospect as overreacting (in a non-Blago kind of way, of course) to a possible threat that turns out to have not been as scary as initially thought than to miss the window of opportunity to contain/slow the spread of a truly dangerous virus.

Comment by former state worker Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 3:27 pm
The key in situations like this is to ignore the media commentary and read what the professionals (the CDC, the World Health Organization, and actual scientists who work with flu) are saying. With the internet this is easy to do. Those sources have been very good and very balanced in what they have said. The fact is, this is not over yet, so folks should continue to stay tuned, but to the right sources.

Comment by jake Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 3:43 pm
The Media Who Cried Pandemic - VanillaMan

There once were news media who were bored as they waited for news to occur. To enrich themselves they grabbed a news camera and sang out, “Pandemic! Pandemic! Swine Flu is loose!”

The people came running to their televisions to listen to what the news media were saying. But when they bought masks, closed schools and had VP Biden warn against traveling in crowds, the news station changed the story, after they sold more TV commercials.

“Don’t cry ‘Pandemic’, news station,” said the people, “when there’s no pandemic!” They went grumbling back to work.

Later, the news media sang out again, “Disaster! Murder! A Palin pregnancy! The Swine flu is spreading across the world!” To their naughty delight, they sold more commercial time as the people ran to their televisions, and public officials held conferences.

When the people saw no disasters or pandemics they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘pandemic’ when there is NO pandemic!”

But the news media moguls just grinned.

Later, the news media saw a REAL disaster spreading throughout the land. Alarmed, they leaped to their cameras and satellites and sang out as loudly as they could, “Warning! Disaster!”

But the people stopped reading the newspapers. They stopped believing the TV reporters. They stopped listening to the radio programs and they ignored the warnings.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.

“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, “Wolf!” Why didn’t you come?”

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning,” he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believes a liar…even when he is telling the truth!”

Comment by VanillaMan Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 3:44 pm
I think you’re right, Jake, and I would take it one step further - since the corporate media demonstrably has no filter that catches these lies, you have to treat major news outlets as *always* false. At best, they can be no more than a conduit to start research on a topic. It’s really hard to keep that skepticism up at all times, which is why it’s best to minimize exposure to the corporate media.

Comment by Thomas Westgard Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 3:54 pm
Shyboy - this one’s just for you(excerpted from Pub med, ahead of print);
“Induction of metallothionein in mouse cerebellum and cerebrum with low-dose thimerosal injection.”
Thimerosal, an ethyl mercury compound, is used worldwide as a vaccine preservative… It is thought that the cerebellum is a sensitive organ against thimerosal. As a result of the present findings, in combination with the brain pathology observed in patients diagnosed with autism, the present study helps to support the possible biological plausibility for how low-dose exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines may be associated with autism.

PMID: 19357975 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Comment by anon Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 4:02 pm
I couldn’t quite understand why everyone seemed to be publishing photographs of people walking around wearing masks.

Can’t remember the details, but I thought that the masks that would have been effective as a preventative measure in this case from GETTING the flu, weren’t readily available and had to be sized well to a person’s face to be effective.

On the other hand, I thought that those who had flu-like symptoms were encouraged (and were to be instructed if flying) to wear masks to help keep the flu from spreading to others.

Therefore, since most if not all people in the photos were all wearing dollar store painters’ masks, it would seem that they believed they were already infected and therefore were trying hard not to spread the flu to others.

I’ll confess that I was half expecting to see a photo of one person in the crowd who WASN’T wearing a mask, looking pretty pleased with both himself and those around him.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, May 5, 09 @ 10:47 pm