Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: Swine flu panic escalated by media
By Jeremy Davis
The News Record, U. Cincinnati
May 06, 2009

If you’ve paid any attention to the media over the last week, your mind may have experienced a swine flu saturation, thanks in part to the brutal blitz of everything swine-flu related.

Through the rash of media coverage and government statements, the recent outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus has caused a worldwide panic and has prompted swift action by a number of countries to prevent spreading.

On Monday, the director-general of the World Health Organization stated that it may raise its flu alert to level six, declaring the swine flu outbreak an official worldwide pandemic.

President Obama responded to the crisis by simply saying that people should stay home from school or work if they are sick, wash their hands frequently and generally just take simple precautions.

Although much of the initial mania has subsided by now with many government officials and doctors stating that the current strain of influenza is no stronger than the regular seasonal flu, many still warn of a possible return of an even stronger influenza outbreak that could arise later this year.

There’s no doubt in the potential seriousness of such an outbreak, but at the same time, we need to put these kinds of events in perspective. Influenza typically kills around 36,000 people every year in this country and hospitalizes thousands more. Infectious diseases kill a massively untold amount of people in Africa each day. And so by comparison, the initial reports of the swine flu seem to have been grossly overstretched.

“So far there are only a handful of confirmed deaths attributable to this strain, and most of those sickened have or will fully recover. Every death is tragic, but I see no reason to deal with this flu outbreak any differently than we typically deal with any other flu season,” said

Rep. Ron Paul, who is also a doctor, in his weekly column, Texas Straight Talk. “Instead, government, in its infinite wisdom, is performing even more invasive screening at airports, closing down schools and sporting events and causing general panic.”

While many see these actions as cautionary steps meant to prevent spreading, others view them as an overreaction to an event that may potentially be less severe than initially represented to be.

And while the rapid spread of any disease around the country or the world is a serious and important matter, reducing panic is equally important.

The media has once again displayed its ability to create an over-hyped crisis out of something that shouldn’t have been.

It’s nice that the media did their job and informed us all on the possible threat; however, it’s unfortunate that the way in which it was reported resulted in inciting certain panic in many rightfully concerned people.

Unfortunately, media-generated delirium surrounding the swine flu seemed to have spread a lot faster than the dreaded flu itself.

The swine flu was provided with all the comforts of a relentless 24-hour news cycle by the always over-dramatic news media, providing no means of escape should you decide to watch the news.

Countless news programs provided us with so-called health experts who claimed that this could be an epidemic, pandemic or whatever, that could potentially affect millions of people. While at the same time, they were telling us that they don’t want to panic anybody. Right.

We were constantly being shown people walking around streets wearing medical masks.

Some commentators suggested that we avoid large crowds or confined spaces with lots of people and we were being told to wash our hands frequently. How are people not going to get overly concerned?

And so we are presented with this new crisis of the month in which we are left with determining what is important or not, based on a media that loves to generate hype.

With an uncertain outlook on how serious this or future outbreaks could get, it’s crucial that we remain level-headed and calm because as history has shown, the rapid spread of panic tends to always make bad situations much worse.

[ Back to Student Voices ]