H1N1: Some perspective
Every time you turn around someone is posting about, talking about, writing about, or otherwise having something to do with H1N1. While I get this is a new flu, and the media have a job to do in increasing sales and readership, the sheer volume of “OMG! H1N1!” is frightening. Found this good graphic that puts things into perspective:
I sincerely hope no one gets H1N1, yes, but come on folks… it’s obvious in the grand scheme of things that it’s just another illness making the rounds. It actually frightens me that more people have died from TB or meningitis in the last 300 days than swine flu.
Bogdano
We’ve through this in the past few months here. Now, there are still people dying of it (as you pointed, not in an alarming rate), but the media coverage is zero. Maybe the long lines in hospitals, as we noticed here, were more harmful than the flu itself.
Oct 30, 2009 @ 13:04:01vdanen
Yeah, but the problem is that people forget that people die from the seasonal flu as well. I know the “target” audience (age groups, etc.) are different and yeah, it’s not pleasant and God forbid anyone should catch it, but the media up here is running rampant on it. I was on CBC’s web site and nearly every other day there is a new H1N1 story.
Take a look at this: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/10/30/h1n1-vaccine.html and then look at the side bar on the side and see when the related stories were all published. That’s a lot of constant coverage (pretty much all saying the same thing).
I don’t know which is worse… extreme paranoia coverage or no coverage. A happy medium would be good.
Oct 30, 2009 @ 13:15:02