Raise your hand if the national epidemic of complete and utter stupidity around the “threat” of swine flu is making you shake your head. Yeah, me too.
Is “swine flu” real? Yes.
Do I want to get it? No.
Will I take precautions to try and steer clear of the virus as much as possible? Of course.
But will I hide in a basement for the next three months? No.
Why? Because with all the talk and hype of pandemics, “swine flu” is still just… well, the flu.
That’s it, people: The flu.
It isn’t the zombie flu, okay? I know watching “Twelve Monkeys” sends a chill down a lot of people’s spines, and we’ve all had nightmares about the zombie virus from “28 Days Later” or Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of The Dead” taking us down… But this is just THE FLU. That’s it.
Yet here we are, in a state of complete and utter panic, shutting down entire school systems, buying surgical face masks by the box-loads, walking around with boxes of sterile wipes, and avoiding handshakes and people altogether. Last week, China considered a ban on all pork imports from Mexico. In Egypt, pigs are being slaughtered en masse… even though this strain of “swine flu” is a human-to-human virus. (You cannot get this strain of swine flu from eating pork.)
This kind of mass hysteria is embarrassing for the human race. Seriously. Stop it.
Everyone settle down for a second, take a step back, and take a deep breath: Every year in the united States, over 35,000 people die of the flu. Really. 35,000+. That is A LOT of people. Way too many, in my book. That number is tragic. And most of the victims of the flu tend to be small children and the elderly.
Yet, as tragic as this may be, no one freaks out. No one panics. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News don’t report on every single new death. The CDC doesn’t hold press conferences to keep people abreast of the spread of the flu. People don’t walk around wearing face masks and carrying sterile wipes everywhere they go. Countries don’t impose travel bans or mass livestock slaughter. School systems don’t shut down and send every kid home for weeks just as a “precaution”.
From November to March, when “flu season” is in full swing in the US, are we supposed to shut everything down and hide in our basements now?
Now that we’ve gotten a bit of perspective on the flu, doesn’t the panic over swine flu seem a little ridiculous? Worse than our overreaction to previous “threats” like African killer bees, West Nile mosquitoes, Avian flu andthe anthrax mailer?
As it turns out, the current strain of “swine flu” doesn’t seem to be all that virulent or particularly easy to pass on. It is no more contagious than any other flu strain, and doesn’t seem to be as potent as other strains that you or I have had the displeasure to run into at some point in our lives.
This is not the bubonic plague, people. It is just the friggin’ flu.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with bacon either, so stop freaking out about the pigs. Maybe we should have called this “CNN flu” instead of “swine flu”. I think that we would all be much better off. Surely, pig farmers and the grain producers who depend on their success to stay afloat would have had a much better week.
So in protest of this complete and utter nonsensical panic over the flu (as if we didn’t have better things to worry about, like… the pirate problem and injuries on “Dancing With The Stars”), some of us have decided to start a little protest of stupidity movement on Twitter. And just to be on the safe side (in case Swine Flu goes viral on the web) we have added face masks to our avatars, effectively turning them into “maskvatars” or “maskatars” (depending on whom you ask) – a term which I think was coined by Columbia, SC’s Mandi Engram – @mandiengram on Twitter (below, bottom right).
Note: As far as I can tell, either @ManFmNantucket (below, bottom center) or @SWoodruff (below, bottom left) were the first Twitterati to done maskvatars. Ther rest of us are just proud copycats.
Fellow blogger Kristi Colvin (@kriscolvin on Twitter, top right, above) gave our little movement its own clever little hashtag/thread: #swinefluwknd on Twitter. (Implying that the maskvatars will disappear on Monday… though they may not. We’ll see.) If you are on Twitter, please consider joining us. 🙂 (And yes, we will be playing with this until the swine flu terror goes away.)
As for the term “Hamthrax“, I am not sure who came up with it first, but I have Kristi Colvin and Mandi Engram to thank for introducing me to it. It gave me a good laugh last night. Thanks to them, I will no longer be referring to Swine Flu as “swine flu” starting today. Hamthrax seems a whole lot more appropriate.
Oh, and if you need me for anything, I’ll be hiding out in my underground African killer-bee and zombie-proof fallout shelter until CNN tells me it’s safe to go outside again.
(Oh and yes, there will be a part 2 to this post.)
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
well said, and well written
Still looking for the yam flavored Bruce’s Yams sponsored mask. Do these masks come in chihuahua size? Spike wants to know.
Also, still convinced this is a viral marketing ploy for the German industrial “band” Swine Flu.
http://www.missdestructo.com/2009/04/miss-destructo-solves-swine-flu.html
Again, we should really be worried about Zombie pigs.
Seriously (google Zombie pig) Genetically modified food is a bigger problem than Swine Flu, who knows how many drugged up pigs we are eating that will eventually kill more people from cancer and other diseases than this flu ever will.
Im sticking to my yams.
-Miss Destructo
Yeah, it’s pretty hilarious. And thanks for the statistics on people who die from the regular flu each year.
What’s really bad is the “conspiracy” theorists who believe that the government put this flu in place. I don’t think facemasks look all that great with tinfoil hats.
Destructo: That is hilarious. I should have known that a German industrial band would benefit from this somehow. 😀
And yes, Bruce’s yams’ next advertising campaign should focus on the impending viral zombie apocalypse. The brand manager should be emphasizing some kind of bulk stock-piling strategy. “Do you really want to be holed up in your attic for six months without an adequate supply of Bruce’s Yams?!”
Mike: If there is a conspiracy here, it has more to do with testing a) the propagation patterns and b) the impact and flow of information across all channels and media. (Seems to me like more of an opportunity than a a conspiracy though.)
The CDC, Homeland Security and other govt. organisms will now be much better equipped to plan and deal with more serious contagions from now on. It’s a good thing.
But man, people need to chill out. 😀
Hamthrax – I love that one.
On CNN: …”More than a week after the swine flu outbreak rattled the world, with cases of infected people popping up from Mexico to South Korea, the new virus strain has shown up in a herd of swine.
…The catch, Canadian officials say, is that the animals may have caught the flu from a human”…
Thanks for your post, I had a good laugh.
Fred
I like this part of a blog post a friend of mine shared on Facebook named:
“Swine flu? A panic stoked in order to posture and spend”
“We appear to have lost all ability to judge risk. The cause may lie in the national curriculum, the decline of “news” or the rise of blogs and concomitant, unmediated hysteria, but people seem helpless in navigating the gulf that separates public information from their daily round. They cannot set a statistic in context. They cannot relate bad news from Mexico to the risk that inevitably surrounds their lives. The risk of catching swine flu must be millions to one.”
http://bit.ly/WHcQJ
Wow, thanks so much for this Olivier. You definitely read my mind and my thoughts on this whole hysteria that really the media has created. Absolutely ridiculous. CNN needs to read this post 🙂
While you’re right that this is ‘just the flue’ – the idea of a virus wiping half of all humanity is something that’s quite possible. Yes, we’re a pretty arrogant lot, but the truth is, we’re fallible. Since the dawn of man, we’ve been in a battle with nature over, well, pretty much everything. We like control. It makes us feel good. But if a virus morphed into a killer form to humans, there’s not much we’d be able to do about it. Masks or no. Think about this – in 2030 there will be nine billion of us on this planet. Nine billion people living in close proximity. We always talk about how nuclear war could wipe us all out, which it certainly could, but that’s just man fearing man. We don’t have much respect for nature (in general terms). If nature wanted to purge us, and a viral strain developed that was just slightly different in its makeup than we were prepared for – guess what, it’s going to win. Yes, this H1N1 strain may or may not be the end all beat all strain that whacks our numbers in half on this planet, but if you really believe something like this is impossible, you’re living in a dreamworld. The thing that makes this virus different is that we don’t have a remedy for it. Yet. They’re working on one now, but our best scientists are saying it will take 6 months at a minimum to develop/deploy that magic pill (shot) that will make everything ok. So the media’s right about keeping this strain in check. If 30K people die here annually from the ‘regular’ flu that we have a remedy for, imagine how quickly the one we don’t have a remedy for could spread and how many people it might actually kill. Containment is king in the virus arena. No, there’s never a reason to panic (about anything), but we really do need to be more educated in terms of how fallible we are, and how little control we really have. We’re just pulsating masses of pink flesh. Throw a little water on us, and some of us might actually melt.
You are incorrect in your references to “no remedy”. First, the “flu” has no remedy per se, but rather primarily prevention in the form of a vaccine. The antivirals, e.g. Tamiflu, are effective in lessening the impact of the virus in the body and shortening the course of the illness. This is also true of H1N1 and yes, most have no immunity and no vaccine yet. You also forgot to mention that the flu vaccine prepared each year for the upcoming flu season is just a concoction of flu viruses (the antigenic parts) which the CDC and other “experts” are just literally guessing will be the culprits in the flu season to come. Remember the flu season last year (’07-’08)? They DID NOT guess correctly and the new media made heyday out of that…and it turn out (again!) that that flu season was fairly mild and did not become the horrible deadly flu the press was trumpeting! This unpredictability to guess correctly the likely upcoming flu viruses and thus distribute an effective vaccine (leaving all vulnerable if incorrect) annually will continue forever. Yes, a pandemic will occur at some point and there will be only a token amount that we humans will be able to do to stem the results, even though we may pride ourselves in our superior intelligence to do otherwise (mother nature always has the upper hand even with a brainless mote like a virus, the inevitable massive earthquakes, super-volcano, and astroid/comet collision). If we think we can fight back with great success, we are deluded beyond all reason.
Oh, and I really hate how because I use typepad for my blog, that I’m a piece of moldy toast, or whatever that icon is to the right, whenever I comment on wordpress blogs. (hehe)
Jim,
Great comment. Unfortunately, the “media” have absolutely zero interest in public welfare. They’re just here to sell advertising.
Compare the tempered, careful, appeasing press conferences by the CDC and WHO with the deliberate panic-inducing constant coverage of “the pandemic” by the media. MSNBC’s photo essay of the epidemic last week showed deserted streets, empty subways, people wearing face masks, etc. Judging by their coverage, the whole world should hide out in airtight shelters. People see these images and freak out.
Yet when I go outside, what do I see? People with no masks on. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen a single surgical mask anywhere. People are still crowding malls, going to restaurants, going to ball games, and filling movie theaters. The panic-driven “reality” that the media have created serves one purpose, and one purpose only: It makes people tune-in constantly. It guarantees ratings. Ergo, it sells advertising, which is how news networks and newspapers make money.
Is “the virus” getting closer to my state? To my town? To my neighborhood? Is it closer now than it was an hour ago? How many more confirmed cases are there? Etc.
Flu epidemics and death tolls don’t come up in the news all that much between October and April, when the flu is a real threat to tens of thousands of people in the Northern hemisphere. But for some reason, this rather benign strain of influenza, as new as it may be, is the story of choice. And rather than showing the reality of the epidemic (people carrying on), all we see are images of people in surgical masks sterilizing everything they touch.
The pirate stories, war coverage and Detroit bankruptcies weren’t bringing in eyeballs because we don’t really care anymore. But a bubonic plague-like epidemic of killer swine flu spreading around the globe? THAT will make people tune in. 😉
It’s completely irresponsible.
Will real superviruses threaten humanity at some point? Yes. Probably. It could be next year or in twenty years. No one knows. And surely, what govt. agencies have learned from this “epidemic” will help create a variety of great models for a response. But the real threat of having 9B people living in close proximity is more likely to come from water and food shortages than new viruses.
Global climate change is melting the glaciers that provide water volume in major rivers that food producers depend on every spring to grow the food humanity needs. THAT is a threat that is getting zero coverage.
The return of cholera, the real bubonic plague, polio and a number of diseases thought to have been eradicated from “industrialized” nations is also inevitable once our population reaches that tipping point. THAT is also a real threat that is getting zero coverage.
But just in case the Umbrella Corporation’s T-Virus does find its way out of Raccoon City, I have my shotgun shells, chainsaw and cans of gasoline ready.
Oh, and my ten-year supply of Bruce’s Yams too. ;D
Olivier…thanks so much for putting words to this movement…one to raise awareness that mainstream media creates such panic for something that necessarily warrants panic. After years of working as a journalist…there is only one time that I truly felt the information I was providing actually raised awareness instead of fighting for numbers.
There is a book by Bernard Goldberg called “Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News” that addresses these issues. You should read it!
I do not want to use your blog as a place for my soapbox, but I do believe that the number of mainstream media outlets that do not mix business and journalism is RAPIDLY decreasing. The scare tactic is real, from the stories to the young producer with a boss screaming over them that if the show’s numbers do not increase…then contract is not resigned. Then the consultant comes in a teaches that young producer that the numbers show that audiences peek on “breaking news”, “weather coverage”, and “crime”.
Thanks…
Bobby
I believe Peter Centilli came up with the Hamthrax name on Friday night while the swinefluewked was introduced complete with themesong..”You got to keep em saparated”
It was hillarious..and fun.
Janine check out his page
Nice job on the panic angle of the threat of pandemics. Panic is defined by the absence of reason.
When the SARS epidemic was being touted by the mass media I was in Viet Nam. I was lucky on my way home to the US to get on the last, crowed, flight out of Singapore before they closed the airport due to SARS. During that awful, long flight to Korea, the first leg of our return home, no sooner had we become airborne than coughing broke out all over the 747 cabin. Tired of listening to the cacophony of the epidemic of nervous coughing, I stood and noisily summoned the chief steward with my best “I’m a doctor” act and demanded that he distribute masks to those who were coughing. He protested with a self deprecating whine that he had no masks. Didn’t matter. I did not expect, or even want masks distributed. My loud demand for masks had already achieved the desired result. The nervous coughing had come to an abrupt halt. Didn’t hear another cough for the rest of the trip. It became an unusually quiet trip.
Unfortunately, the threat of a really bad pandemic such as featured in works of fiction, is very real and increasing rapidly as the world culture continues down a path without reason inspired by greed.
Panic and greed might be natures bid to thin out this massively destructive herd of over intelligent primates.
herb
What makes humans much different than cows, schools of sardines, wildebeests, flocks of sheep or 10,000 strong flocks of birds? In reality, not much even though our human egos are repulsed by this idea. The concept of “herd mentality” is extremely strong in we humans as this “swine flu” craze so clearly attests. Like other herd organisms, each specimen seems to itself to be operating independently, but when viewed as a whole or from a larger distance, the herd mentality and actions are clear. Since human herd mentality is ingrained in every one of us, even our esteemed scientists are unaware participants. Like in all herd, no clear leader can be identified, but the herd moves as one, changing direction at often unpredictable times and in seemly random manners. The very definition of the news media is one of an organized herd with the media out in the front of the stampede leading all the followers in a frenzied mob. This “swine flu” is such a clear example of just another stampede.
While it is true that there will again be some kind of viral pandemic with hundreds of thousands or millions succumbing, this human need to sensationalize every twitch of the our world’s viral tail is as irrational as cattle leaping off cliffs just because the cow in front did it. Yes, we all tend to be cattle at the very core, with relatively few resisters, and the press and politicians always out in front leading us into perpetual cattle-brained stupidity (I won’t even go into the current financial insanity in which be are being herded!!!!).
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It’s true that the media is not interested in the public welfare. We just want you to click on our links to sensational crap, such as this link to a nauseating photo of Leviticus’ “I Told You So” Aporkalypse pie: http://apocalypsecakes.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/leviticus-i-told-you-so-aporkalypse-pie/