Here's a sampling of some headlines about the swine flu:
So okay, I added the exclamation points. But the point is how news media is manufacturing this atmosphere of fear and more fear.
To put this in perspective, let's take a look at the Center for Disease Control website where they actually do things like track the regular flu as a normal course of business. Let's take a look at the data for the week of March 1 to March 7, 2009 - way before "swine flu" become part of the popular lexicon.
Nation (U.S.): 23% of samples tested positive for flu
No. of specimens tests: 5446
No. of positive specimens: 1252 or 23%
Number of Pediatric Deaths: 5
Pediatric Deaths Cumulative for Season: 26
So in just a one average week a couple months ago, the CDC confirmed 1252 flu cases out of 5500 samples which resulted in 5 pediatric deaths - numbers which are a small subset of all the flu cases in the country at the time.
By any comparison, the regular flu appears to be a lot more contagious and widespread, and so far caused a greater number of deaths in the U.S. than swine flu, even if you look only at deaths among infants and children.
Yet you don't hear about schools being closed and Vice Presidents warning people not to take public transportation when the numbers clearly show that regular influenza is (so far) proven to be much more virulent and serious than swine flu so far.
Now, I'm not saying we should throw caution out the window; this is, after all, a "novel" virus. However, every time a news organization writes a swine flu headline, I'd love to have them throw up stats on the regular flu in parentheses right in that headline.
