Swine Flu!

A month ago:

“The Swine Flu is a global emergency” … “Is this the worse epidemic since SARS?” … “Is the whole world going to become infected”… “The swine flu era!”

Present day:

The Bloomberg is reporting : WHO’s Chan Warns Nations Not to Overreact to Swine Flu Pandemic
(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a1OeX_3t1Z5c&refer=japan)

I believe that our society has blown the swine flu cases way out of proportions with most of the patients contracting swine flu getting a cough at the least. In the article, it says that: “The new virus has sickened 19,273 people and caused 117 deaths since it was discovered in Mexico and the U.S. in April, WHO said yesterday. Bird flu, which isn’t easily transmitted among people, has killed 262 of the 433 people known to have been infected since 2003.” So is this really something to go crazy about?

No.

Comparing the swine flu, with 0.6% chance of death, to the bird flu, with 60.5% chance of death, is ridiculous. Another point is the fact that the seasonal flu kills 34,000 people each year in the United States alone. Why isn’t there any reports
everyday on that?

It’s because the media loves to blow things out of proportions. I was watching CNN a month ago and they started calling this the swine flu era! That is a great way into comforting your viewers. It’s like our media outlets are actually trying to scare us so we don’t go out of our homes unless we wear hazmat suites.

I would also like to point out the other side of this story. It is true that it is better to be safe than sorry. Maybe the media is just being “safe”. However, lately they seem to be just reporting deaths and not cases of swine flu and I believe that
this is making people believe that there are many deaths, when there really is not.

Thank you media for being… well yourself.