SAGE

I don't want to make a stink, as a death is a death and all deaths are sad times for someone. The death of a single person can effect hundreds of others. But I was reading on the jump in deaths from the swine flu and had to think...so what. 5700 people in a week. I guess that is a lot of people. I mean that would be everyone I went to high school with over my 5 years there.

But we are talking about 5700 out of 6.something billion. Why is this such a panic issue? Why is it getting this kind of media? and why is the language of the media that of pending doom, global disaster and mass death?

I guess on the one hand there is the belief that information is one of the best ways to battle anything. Thus the media feels it is its responcibility to get the information out there. (though most news reports are a fair amount of non-information, rarely making not that handwashing is still the single greatest defence against these kinds of infections...you'd think that would get a thousand plugs a day)

Also, there is perhaps a sense that slow information in the past has fueled the spread of some of our more deadly global pandemics. If only someone had put up the flags about HIV back in the 80s would we be where we are now in that fight? Or following the SARS outbreak... the Avian flu, mad cow...if only we had got the information to the masses and scared them suffiently that they would be cautious and kind in avoiding and preventing spread of the infection.

Of course H1N1 Influenza is the hallmark of a kind of Orwellian future coming to life. For generations (well at least one generation) we have been getting warning about the use of antibiotics in animals, about the problems with the feed, changes to genetics etc...that the way we treat our food will put us at risk. That our treatment is going to produce new microbes, capable of moving between species, a pathway that was mostly theoretical, speculated and wished for in science fiction novels. So perhaps there is some "I told you so" in all this media time.

Nonetheless, while it is important that the media offer this imformation that people take the risk of infection seriously, it should be coupled with the handwashing information.