Flu is a swine of a thing at the best of times. Is swine flu the past tense of swine flies? Every night a news reporter deposits themselves outside Rangitoto College to stake our claim to fame as one of the first nations on the planet to have imported this “deadly” virus.
Trouble with this sensationalist reporting is that it may create the boy-who-cried-wolf mentality. I would call for more measured reporting, or else we may end up saying “there you see ... it amounted to a hill of beans just like the bird-flu panic”.
Sensationalist reporting: Flu victim becomes international celebrity. It all started with this particular pig. If 300 die, it will affect the economy to the tune of 235 million dollars. On a scale of 1-6 (the pandemic scale) it is a 7. One sneeze is all it takes to infect 1000 people around you. Pigs and birds get together to create a pig of a bird flu… a swine of a bird flu …
Meanwhile ... its back to stockpiling Tamiflu and masks …
No comments:
Post a Comment