What Are They Telling You When They Tell You About Swine Flu
Okay. I’ve heard enough about swine flu now that I want to talk about it. There are so many things happening in the world and happening in our daily lives, that the information flow should be pretty varied. When you start to hear a story or phrase repeated over and over, it’s time to sit up and pay attention to what you’re actually being told.
Swine flu. Swine flu. Swine flu. Outbreak. Pandemic.
The WHO raised the world pandemic alert level to Phase 4. What does that mean? It sure sounds scary, but it just means that human-to-human spread is confirmed and a community level outbreak is possible.
Obama has asked for $1.5 billion to help fight swine flu. Help how? Apparently through drug stockpiles and monitoring of future cases.
California’s Governor Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency.
Reading all this, I’m prepared to be scared by the numbers. State of emergency. A billion dollars in drugs. PHASE FOUR!
When I look at how the numbers stack up, though, I start to look for different messages in the headlines. The numbers:
105 confirmed cases worldwide, with 6 deaths, all in Mexico.
In the US, 64 cases in five states.
In California, where there’s now a “state of emergency”, 10 cases.
Hrm. Okay.
Joshua saw two girls walking down a street near our house today wearing facemasks. No cases of swine flu have appeared in our state, Georgia. We live in the suburbs. We live so far in the suburbs we’re almost in the country again. There were no other people near these girls.
They’ve heard the messages, but what exactly did they hear? Try these hypothetical headlines on for size:
The World Is Scary
Be Afraid Of The People Around You
You Need Government Agencies To Keep You Safe
Stay Glued To The Television In Case Something New Is Coming To Kill You
The World Is Scary
The World Is Scary
The World Is Scary
When something serious happens, I’ll be as glad as the next person that we have mass communication available to us. But, I’m not sure that’s as often as we’re led to believe. In the meantime, tt’s impossible to filter out the news these days. You can do your best, though, to hear what’s actually being said.
Pay attention.
This post has 6 comments
April 29th, 2009
What really irks me is that we never see this type of news coverage about the deaths from other forms of the flu. The Flu kills about 40,000 people each year, yet we get this one strain that is new, and people freak out about it.
April 29th, 2009
Haha. That’s a really good point. Holy shit! We need face masks!
May 4th, 2009
Oh!! I didn’t realize he saw someone with masks!
May 4th, 2009
I know! Right here near our neighborhood. So silly!
May 5th, 2009
You know, the real problem is they’re using numbers. If it was called Orange phase, I could make a killing selling duct tape and plastic.
September 2nd, 2009
The Natural Solutions Foundation really went to town on swine flu. Their take on it was that it was the latest attempt to engineer an actual pandemic (avian flu also failed to live up to its hype) and an experiment to see how passively we’d all accept whatever mandatory vaccines, quarantine, etc. they could throw at us. There are also some pretty compelling youtube videos and the like with all kinds of juicy innuendo about how it was clearly all bioengineered. Of course, the official line that it was bred in a factory farm has important ramifications too…
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