THE POLLS TELL IT ALLSwine Flu and the Media
So were the horrors and dangers of the Mexico swine flu "pandemic" over-hyped by the media? Prow’s Edge readers and our own crew's blog certainly seemed to think so in their responses to our poll question “Is the threat of the swine flu for cruise passengers exaggerated in the media?”
More than 75% of voters declared their belief that the threat of the virus had been grossly exaggerated. Less than 14 % of them believed that it had not been emphasized ennough.
And they weren’t alone. An expert on Fox News said that in his opinion the national media was “exaggerating and hyping” the issue ...... claims of a pandemic, he said, and stories that the whole of humanity was in danger was “hyperbole and fear-mongering.”
Like Prow’s Edge, he said an emphasis on hand-washing was probably all that was initially needed.
Many other medical experts have urged it is time to get things proportion. Dr John Crippen is the pseudonym of a British doctor who writes a popular medical blog in The Guardian newspaper. The view from his General Practitioner's surgery on the day he wrote was: ”We have 15,000 patients and are close to one of the larger airports in England, but have not seen a case of flu. We have not had a single patient worrying that he or she might have flu. It feels like a phoney war.”
At a meeting of Dr John Crippen’s partners, one said: "There were 2,000 deaths, mainly children in Africa and Asia, yesterday."
A medical student looked shocked: "I didn't know swine flu had reached that part of the world."
"It hasn't," replied the doctor. "I'm talking of deaths from malaria. But that isn't news, is it?"
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