This whole week the swine flu has been played up in the media as the next plague; a global pandemic the likes of which we have never seen is just moments away. All of the media has been characterizing the swine flu (or H1N1 virus) as “deadly.” It is rapidly spreading and we have no vaccine, nor natural immunities.
Correspondents and contributors across the cable news spectrum have been wildly speculating about how tens of millions of people could be at risk and quite possibly die, with extremely scary graphics.
This is infuriating me. It is nothing but crazy hype to scare the living crap out of us in order to drive up ratings! It is one thing to inform, but quite another to report endless wild speculation and fear-mongering that could only result in widespread panic.
It is not that big of a deal. I repeat: it is not that big of a deal. Allow me to filter through the hype.
Approximately 36,000 people die of the regular flu in the United States annually, with several million people infected. With the swine flu so far, 1 person has died in the United States and there have been 70 confirmed cases of infection. Which sounds more deadly and life threatening?
300,000 to 500,000 people die of the regular flu worldwide annually. Approximately 170 people have been confirmed dead due to the swine flu. They were all in Mexico, save for 1 in the United States (incidentally, a sick visiting Mexican toddler). Again, which sounds more deadly and life threatening?
There is absolutely no evidence that the swine flu is any more severe or deadly than the regular flu. In actuality, the majority of the confirmed cases in the United States and elsewhere in the world have been quite mild. People are getting the swine flu and recovering fully within 5-10 days.
Mild regular flu-like symptoms and full recoveries don’t sound much like the apocalyptic impression given by the media.
So why the high death toll in Mexico and virtually no other deaths anywhere else in the world? My guess is that people waited too long to seek out treatment, if at all, and by that time it was too late. I’m also assuming that Mexico’s facilities to treat the flu in general are not all that great. I can’t find the data on how many people in Mexico die of the flu annually, but it is highly like that it is far greater than the number of deaths in the United States.
The rising death toll is highly misleading. It gives the impression that people are dying every day of this new deadly swine flu. In actuality, the rising death toll is almost entirely from people who have died within the past month and not within the past several days. People who were thought to have died of the regular flu or other respiratory related deaths within the past month or so are now being re-tested for swine flu. This is where the deaths are coming from.
The Mexican toddler who died, as far as I understand it some 2 and a half weeks ago now, in the United States of swine flu is thus far the only confirmed death here. I would say that he almost definitely arrived in the United States already infected and then his parents waited days until taking him to a hospital. It was too late by that point.
A death in the United States more than two weeks ago is no cause for alarm. Let us put this into perspective: last flu season 86 children died of the regular flu in the US and already this season 55 children have died of the regular flu in the US (as of April 18th).
This is SARS, bird flu and west nile scare tactics all over again. The swine flu situation is definitely something to be vigilant about, but not something to go crazy over. Situations like these demonstrate the flaws of 24-hour cable news networks. In the absence of new information, wild speculation is made. Dozens of pundits and “experts” are brought out. The air-time must be filled.
If you don’t freak out about the possibility of getting the regular flu every year, I see absolutely no reason to freak out over this.
Spitting on a Well-Scrubbed Floor 