College Times

Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: Blogs

Media Credit: Richard Tsong-Taatarii

A friend of mine got a call from his dad this past weekend. It was early in the morning and he was asleep. His dad warned him in an overexposed paranoid panic to go buy surgical masks.

He got into his car, half-asleep and fully confused. He was expecting zombies to pop out of dark corners, people to be dead on the sidewalks and the skies to be grey.

It was a sunny morning. No one outside was wearing surgical masks. Then he came to his senses, turned around, went home and back to sleep.

He won't die from Swine Flu and, more than likely, neither will you.

The media has been looking for a new story to latch onto. Obama hasn't made any semi-funny bowling jokes lately, Britney Spears has returned to her sanity and the Somali pirates lost their epic battle off the east shores of Africa with Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama and a little help from the Navy Seals. So what's a corporate-owned news media organization to do?

"OH SH*T! IT'S THE SWINE FLU!"

That seems to be the headline running on every newscast, newspaper, weekly news magazine and blog.

I'm not saying the risk of contracting Swine Flu, more appropriately called H1N1, isn't there. Sure it is. It's the flu. You might get it, you might not. That's how the flu works.

At the same time, as far as statistics go, you are far more likely to die from regular influenza than Swine Flu. You are more likely to die in a plane crash, a car crash and of AIDS (of course, not all at once.) You are also more likely to be murdered.

Honestly, I'd be more worried about dying from gang violence at the Mexican border than contracting Swine Flu.

So why is everyone so panicked?

I blame the media. As a journalist, some of the stories that are running make me ashamed to be a reporter. It's a journalist's job to inform the public, but it's also our job to provide an accurate portrayal of potential dangers. The Swine Flu has been blown up to biblical proportions - in some circles, quite literally.

Here's an excerpt from an article on Associated Content:

"One of the most well-known Bible prophecy verses that describes some of the events that will happen in the last days is Matthew 24:7: 'For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.' Divers is an old way to spell diverse. So this verse says that in the last days, there will be pestilences, in the plural. The dictionary says that pestilence is a contagious disease. Swine flu qualifies as a contagious disease."

Continued...

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