Little Boy H1N1
Anne Applebaum wants to know why responses to swine flu outbreaks vary so widely:
How did we get to this point? That is, how did we get to a point where outbreaks treated with the utmost seriousness by the World Health Organization — swine flu has been officially declared a “pandemic” — receive vastly different levels of respect in different countries, different cities and even among different social groups within them? Some seem convinced that the current flu epidemic is a modern version of the Black Death. Others — including a number of elected politicians and health bureaucrats — suspect a hoax perpetrated by Swiss drug companies. Although the wide variety of reactions has been present since the virus first appeared in the spring, the subsequent failure to come to any global consensus about how swine flu should be treated is producing as many medical reactions as there are national governments.
Well, we got to this point by the media over-hyping the real threats of H1N1. Barely had the virus reared its head before it was being compared to the Spanish flu outbreak of 1916. The truth, which almost no one reported on, was that there was little chance of the comparison would be valid. So said John Barry back in May:
Sonali Kolhatkar: John Barry, I had interviewed you on Uprising years ago when your book just came out – The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History – so I’m wondering if you thought in your lifetime you’d were going to be sitting down and doing a flurry of interviews about essentially this next flu that many are comparing to the 1918 flu?John Barry: Well, first, fortunately, at this point it doesn’t look like it’s going to be anything like 1918. I won’t say that I was thinking of doing a lot of interviews but I was thinking, and anyone who understands the virus knows this, that there was certainly going to be another pandemic and another one after that and another one after that and since the longest gap between pandemics that we know about in going back several hundred years is 42 years and, you know, it’s now 39 years since the last one so I certainly expected another pandemic in my lifetime and wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more than one.
Barry even explains why this was always a bad comparison: “…1918 was the worst, the highest death toll of any disease outbreak in history…” Understand that in 1916-1918, roughly one out of every three people on the face of the earth suffered from the flu and conservative estimates are that at least fifty million people died from it. When the word “pandemic” began getting tossed about six months ago, the total worldwide death count was barely in double digits.
When the only message one gets is about impending doom, over-reactions are going to ensue. Human nature then dictates that a second, conflicting message will simply be discounted by a large number of people. In short, telling people, “Fear for you life!” then following with a soft word of caution simply does nothing to stem the fears.
Then there are some people who are simply invested in the idea that everyone should get a vaccine for every possible disease. For example, over at Street Prophets, I was attacked as being a danger to public health simply because I said: 1) fear of H1N1 is overblown; 2) my children will not be vaccinated because they have a bad reaction to the flu vaccine; and 3) I’m not really concerned about getting the virus myself. For example:
Just stand aside Xpat, (0 / 0)and let the rest of us try to save a few lives here.
It’s that sort of thinking that led to the State of New Jersey requiring toddlers to get the flu vaccine, when the vaccine is largely useless. Just to add to that idiocy, the principle of our kids’ school has had two robocalls to inform parents their kids can get the H1N1 flu vaccine, but it isn’t required. If H1N1 is so much worse than seasonal flu, why is it not mandatory as well?
Beyond that, even as the vaccine is about to start, there is evidence that natural resistance is stronger than estimated and the spread of the flu is actually declining naturally. Well, isn’t it wonderful that we spent so many billions of dollars to combat a virus that: 1) was never as dangerous as it was hyped; 2) natural resistance was better than hyped; and 3) is already on its way out anyway?
This is, of course, what I tried to explain previously:
My point is that H1N1 – the flu that were are currently being scared into taking immunizations for – is not really that big of a threat. The experience of the Southern Hemisphere during the last nine months show that it is more severe than normal flu years, but it is no where near as deadly as it is being made out to be. We are not going to have millions of otherwise healthy people dropping dead. It’s irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
The response? Pure hysteria:
…we’ve had a whole season’s worth of mortality already this year.
Yes, because h1n1 hits earlier – but it peaks earlier and then extinguishes earlier. Back to Applebaum:
I’ve written before that a touch of media panic never hurts — at least it teaches people what the disease in question might be…
Of course, it does hurt. It hurt everyone who got a shot because of the media-whoring and then had any sort of reaction to it. It also hurts the credibility of those who would monitor such things because the next time something hits, we aren’t going to pay as much attention. In a perverse way, whoring the flu-fear this time makes it even more likely that the next outbreak will be even worse – because people will be tired of hearing that they are about to die.
Here’s a fresh idea: just tell people the truth. Give them information and allow them to make up their own mind how much danger they are facing. If we continue to overuse the terms “epidemic” and “pandemic” then they will become meaningless. And that is a greater threat to public health than anything I might write, in any of the places that I publish.
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