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 Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 1:49 pm
I recently talked to several informants that I have in Mexico and so far they have told me that they (the government) have only increased the number of deaths without even posting names of the people that have "died".
Something is going on and they dont want us to know.
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 1:50 pm
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 1:52 pm
And the best part is that everyone is freaking out about something that they just dont know about. Remember about the "people are afraid of the unknown" saying? Thats a perfect example to this crap.
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 1:55 pm
Whats funny is my boyfriend got sick after we came back from San Diego ... dun dun dunnnnnn.
But he's fine now.
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 2:39 pm
Some expressions that I've read at various places that criticize it have pointed out that (and I do agree with them on some of these factors) that American media in particular employ tactics for making sure that the American Public is in a state of "fear" out of lack of a better word.
This fear is perhaps best explained in Michael Moore's documentary "Bowling for Columbine". Perhaps one reason for the fear that is exerted all over the world by mainstream media is to make people thankful of their goverment and to create a perception of faith and belief in "Big Brother" which in this case is the Government and that when the goverment takes away some of your right, you will trust that Big Brother really
While this "epidemic" isn't something to absolutely ignore or underestimate since this has been proved to be medically quite dangerous (I recall that so far the mortality rate has just been 6% so far) the media has definately VERY skillfully manipulated people's perception of its danger, heck, you can just look at most forums and the internet and you will find a lot of panic going on around the swine flu which were quite similar to the Media Hype surrounding the Bird Flu (H5N1) or SARS. So the media has created a great deal of fear, yet besides what I have written, what is the media's purpose of scaring us?
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 2:59 pm
The media attempts to scare us for a simple reason - fear means money.
They find a new type of bug that has the potential to kill people and blow it out of proportion. by doing this, people are constantly reminded to watch the news to check if the virus has spread further anywhere. This means higher ratings, and so more money. The more you watch, the more money they get, and with people tuning in just to check for the latest update on a current event, they tend to check the news a great deal more often. As you said, we can tell from the way people are panicking on the forums that this fear has spread far more contagiously than the virus itself.
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 3:13 pm
It's all about the media and the spin they put on it. I myself have come down with Swine flu, and you know what? It's just a bad cold, with a fever.
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 3:46 pm
@iuesef...QFT, and the company that manufactures paper masks is certainly booming...i went to the chemist today to pick up my nicotine patches (quitting smoking is a bugger) and sardonically asked the chemist if they had sold out of paper masks yet...apparently the company which supplies the entire uk has sold out!!! the uk has sold out of paper masks...what tea-swilling, tv-goggling, dildos the inhabitants of this island are! razz
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Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 12:50 am
I looked this up a couple days ago on my laptop, but it's in the shop so I'm going from memory. I picked up the CDC 'cause of death' numbers for 2004 a couple years back for an argument, and they've been invaluable.
In 2004, 1100 people died from influenza. Broken down by age, 554 of those deaths were seniors 85+. That's more than half, note. As of two days ago when last I checked, seven people had been confirmed as having died of swine flu, every one of them a Mexican national. Scary? Not hardly. Given Mexico's current problems, I bet they have worse healthcare than normal, and it wasn't up to par to begin with.
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Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 6:51 am
Kaz-Balan The worst thing is that when a real biohazard shall happen, such management of the crisis by the medias may provoke a complete catastrophe, some day, especially with health structures degrading at the rhtythm we witness in most countries ( including rich ones ). Do not be fooled : the risk is very real. But people should just have a look at the pandemics in Africa, in India, how many casualties diseases have caused all along decades there, and they should compare with what we have now. They should also compare the technical and financial means, and realize the rich countries are, comparatively, extremely well protected... thanks to some amount of taxes going to public health surveys and structures. Know also some historic diseases were never found treatments ( Black Plague ), or might happen again ( Spanish flu or that deadly a variation of flu ), and over-using antibiotics has very problematic consequences, with more and more classic streptococci varieties getting more and more resistant... maybe you are right, but the bottom line is, if you live in a developed western country you may get the flu but it is unlikely to kill you. this swine flu is actually a variant of the "spanish flu" which killed more people than the first world war...but that's because it happened straight afterwards and there was no health infratructure to cope. it's possible this pandemic (if the who actually declare it is one) will knock out huge swathes of populations in Africa and India and other 3rd world economies, partly because those countries have no stocks of drugs to deal with a large outbreak. i read somewere online that India has enough anti viral whatever it is to treat only 0.0025% of its population. the other reason it will have a huge effect in, for example, Africa is because there is already an AIDS pandemic and a TB pandemic happening...30% of South Africans have HIV... after the bird flu scare most European countries have a very large stock of anti viral drugs available..and i'm sure North America must be well prepared too after the Sars crisis?
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black_wing_angel Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 7:02 am
village midget Kaz-Balan The worst thing is that when a real biohazard shall happen, such management of the crisis by the medias may provoke a complete catastrophe, some day, especially with health structures degrading at the rhtythm we witness in most countries ( including rich ones ). Do not be fooled : the risk is very real. But people should just have a look at the pandemics in Africa, in India, how many casualties diseases have caused all along decades there, and they should compare with what we have now. They should also compare the technical and financial means, and realize the rich countries are, comparatively, extremely well protected... thanks to some amount of taxes going to public health surveys and structures. Know also some historic diseases were never found treatments ( Black Plague ), or might happen again ( Spanish flu or that deadly a variation of flu ), and over-using antibiotics has very problematic consequences, with more and more classic streptococci varieties getting more and more resistant... maybe you are right, but the bottom line is, if you live in a developed western country you may get the flu but it is unlikely to kill you. this swine flu is actually a variant of the "spanish flu" which killed more people than the first world war...but that's because it happened straight afterwards and there was no health infratructure to cope. it's possible this pandemic (if the who actually declare it is one) will knock out huge swathes of populations in Africa and India and other 3rd world economies, partly because those countries have no stocks of drugs to deal with a large outbreak. i read somewere online that India has enough anti viral whatever it is to treat only 0.0025% of its population. the other reason it will have a huge effect in, for example, Africa is because there is already an AIDS pandemic and a TB pandemic happening...30% of South Africans have HIV... after the bird flu scare most European countries have a very large stock of anti viral drugs available..and i'm sure North America must be well prepared too after the Sars crisis? Yeah, I agree with you. "Americans" and other "rich" countries, have very little to actually fear. We will have casualties, I'm sure, but NOTHING compared to poor countries.
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 4:25 pm
An utter lie? No. Overblown? Maybe. Mishandled? Yes, outrageously so.
Influenza is nothing to laugh at. Most people do because they have a misconception of what it is. Most people come down with many other viral sicknesses which last a day or so in which they attribute to influenza. The stomach flu is a good example of this. The stomach flu is not in fact the flu, it is not influenza.
Influenza is quite dangerous and no where near as common as people seem to think it is. A pandemic of any type of it should be forewarned and actions should be used to prevent the spread of it. The media however, did not just forewarn the public, they blew it over the top and to the moon.
The media knows and understands that fear will get them ratings. People will watch to know what is happening and what will happen next. They scared the public silly to get more money, to be able to claim more for their advertising spots and to claim to be better than the rest.
Should we have paniced like we did? No. Should we have ignored it? No.
The people who didn't take any precautions, who didn't wash their hands a little extra and didn't take notice of the sick around them, just blowing it off as 'media hype' are as bad as those who locked their doors and scrubbed the house clean.
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