Swine Flu...are you panicked yet?

I’ve been following the Swine Flu coverage in the media with a curious ear, but not a panicked posture. In general, my distrust of the American Media trumps my interest in its topics; watching the two years of election coverage and various other blown-out-of-proportion media circuses have soured me on trusting FOX news, or even CNN, on matters of public concern.

Part of the problem is that many media outlets underestimate the intelligence of their viewing audience, and dumb down their reports to meet the (presumed) cognitive abilities of the American public. While this undoubtedly helps many people get a grasp on what’s going on in the most general sense, it also has the unfortunate effect of oversimplifying to the point of making everything black-and-white, good-or-bad, life-or-death.

When popular media outlets give reports of Swine Flu deaths, there is always the implied “and it could happen to you!” in their grave delivery that sends many people into worry and panic. What they don’t say is that billions upon billions of people do not have Swine Flu, and that most people who come into contact with the virus will make antibodies and will never show any unusual symptoms. However, that doesn’t attract an audience, so the fear-mongering continues.

The Scientific American has been a very valuable source of information for me, and the article that has helped me the most was an interview with Chris Olsen from the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

In the interview, he starts with some basics, such as “what constitutes a pandemic virus is when a virus enters the human population—a virus we’ve never seen before in human beings—while everyone is simultaneously susceptible.” This is perhaps the best definition of “pandemic” that I have heard yet, and illustrates that nobody had antibodies for the H1N1 Swine Flu virus at the moment it transferred to humans.

Is it worth panicking about? Taking into consideration the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, up to 1/3 of the world’s population may have been infected, and of those who were infected the death rates were 2.5 to 5 percent—up to 50 times the mortality seen in other influenza outbreaks. That works out to about 50 million people who died from the Spanish Flu, and in that regard, consider that 1918 was before antibiotics had been discovered. It is likely that most of the people who died from the 1918 Spanish Flu succumbed to pneumonia caused by opportunistic bacteria who took advantage of their flu-weakened immune systems (National Institute of Health website). Considering the medical advances that have been made in the last 90 years, panicking at less than 200 people dead from Swine Flu is unwarranted.

Stephen Hume of the Vancouver Sun compares the two outbreaks in the best explanation that I’ve seen. I tried to paraphrase, but he’s got all the information compiled so eloquently that I would rather quote him for a few paragraphs:

“It’s estimated that about 28 per cent of Canadians and Americans contracted the Spanish flu. Worldwide, an estimated 2.5 per cent of the sick died of complications, which made the pandemic one of the most lethal flu outbreaks in recorded history. Certainly it was one that imprinted itself upon human consciousness for several generations.

But there’s another way to look at those statistics. You might observe, for example, that they mean that even during the worst ravages of the 1918 flu, 97.5 per cent of those infected survived and recovered. Or that 72 per cent of the population — even in the absence of the sophisticated public health planning and infrastructure that Canada and the U.S. have since built — was not infected during the pandemic.

So, even if we had a repeat of the 1918 flu, the chances were seven out of 10 that you wouldn’t catch it and if you did, the odds were better than nine out of 10 that you’d survive.

That was during the worst pandemic of the modern era and one which occurred in the days before the instantaneous communications of radio, television and the Web enabled quick public health responses.”

That is not to say that the experiences of the families of the dead are trivial. Each death is a tragedy. But while one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Unless and until the H1N1 Swine Flu grows in its scope to even a fraction of the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu, it should not be a cause for panic. Proper hygiene and common sense measures, such as avoiding contact with people who are sick, and sneezing into your sleeve rather than your hand, are the day-to-day measures that we can take to avoid becoming ill. Beyond that, there is nothing else that any individual can do to absolutely guarantee that we will not become ill, and panic leads to stress which can lead to a compromised immune system, increasing one’s chances of sickness.

And that’s something to think about.

Comments

[ec]

Is that a piglet on a beach!? tres bon.

[LJ]

Almost...that's a piglet tied to a tree behind the cemetery in Yelapa. I fell in love with the puerquitos that week, and spent a little bit of time each day scritching their hairy little chins.

I thought the photo was appropriate, considering it's me, touching a Mexican pig.

[Erin]

Food for thought: Perhaps by inducing somewhat of a panic in people who aren't into doing research and getting to the brass tacks is helping contain the outbreak. If the media said, "It's not that bad, just go about your business," how many people would be lax about hand washing, thoughtless about coughing/sneezing around other people, and cavalier about going out when they have flu-like symptoms? How much worse could it get?

I agree, though, that things are hyped up so those media companies can make a buck, and that is really unfortunate. Because ultimately making money is why they do it, not out of genuine concern for the public.

[Erin]

P.S. This was really fascinating info.