Many have been questioning the morbid over-reporting of the swine flu alert (as well as the insane reactions to the news reports by Chinese officials regarding Mexican and Canadian nationals who have come to visit China). As usual, Hans Rosling has something to tell us about it. If you do not follow Hans Rosling at Gapminder you should. On his latest Swine flu alert! News/Death ratio: 8,176 he compares the number of deaths from swine flu and tuberculosis, using the WHO numbers from April 24 (Day One of WHO’s reporting of swine flu) through May 6, 2009, then compares the number of news stories related to each issue, via Google news search. (This is a YouTube vid, so readers in China will have to use a VPN or whatever else you use to scale the great dumbing wall).
During this 12-day period there were 31 swine flu deaths, whereas during the same dozen days there were 63,066 deaths from tuberculosis. The number of news stories related to swine flu equal 8,176 news stories per death, while tuberculosis only gets .1 (yes, one-tenth) of a story per death. Rosling does not play down the pandemic possibility of swine flu, though he does seem to wonder where the media is when dealing with tuberculosis, a common and unglamorous disease that slogs along killing more than 5,000 each day. What would happen if the media turned their hairy eyeballs towards the tuberculosis issue and whipped it up into a fire-spitting, sphincter-puckering fearful bug that is coming to get you? But that’s not going to happen because the demographics aren’t there. The victims are the invisible poor, the discards, and they don’t buy or sell any ad space, though something that can threaten us via a sneeze that has the ability to cross all social boundaries does. “Swine Flu! It’s coming to get you!” Fairly simple. It’s almost as if without tuberculosis we’d have 60,ooo more problems to deal with today than we had last week. So it becomes acceptable to not report it, since we can’t see them, don’t know them, and, if perchance, we were to get their disease, we’d have the cash (or insurance) to get the good drugs. So much depends upon getting good drugs. Always has, whether it’s medical or recreational. The one’s with the cash always get the better stuff.
And while I’m on the subject of the media, you might want to have a look at the Bill Moyers’ interview with David Simon, the creator of The Wire. Simon has many pointed comments concerning many different issues, and one of them is how newspapers have dug their own hole and deserve the great sucking sinkhole collapse that is swallowing them up. Warning: Leftist Pinko Socialism Shit! Great stuff!
3 responses so far ↓
1 Bill // May 8, 2009 at 11:28 pm
We all know that we should only be talking about the disease that caused most death – cardiac arrest. We should have it on front page of every news paper every day that it is the highest. That is everyday for the next few millenia, bar none. This will save the cost of all media, as they can copy the same story day after day, only adjust the number slightly everyday. I recommend this to save the world from this economic crisis we have now.
2 MMG // May 9, 2009 at 11:24 am
Moyer’s David Simon interview is great. Thanks for sharing.
3 Michele // May 14, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I don’t think it’s that much of an overreaction since the swine flu came out of nowhere and, as you say, could have pandemic potential. It also shouldn’t be too surprising that people want to read news that may affect them.
But I’d like to say it’s good to have people like you, Bill Moyers and Hans Rosling keeping us aware of greater problems in the world. Keep up the great blogging!
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