Well, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but...
Don't you just love it when someone declares something and then says "but"? It means they're about to backtrack. So I'll rephrase. I don't know that Swine Flu is a manufactured gimmick, and I don't know that the media are the perps, but I do know that they've jumped on the bandwagon big time. Just like they did with the economic meltdown, and Y2K and Sars (Bird Flu) and every other bogeyman that's come down the pike for as long as I can remember. It seems to me that the hype gets bigger and shriller as time goes on, but that's only my perception.
What we do know at the time of writing is that around 100 people have died of this flu. That's nothing in the grand scheme of things. In the U.S. alone an average of 36,000 people die each year of influenza, and the worldwide number is harder to pin down, but it seems to be around 500,000. So then, even if by the time you read this 500 people have died of this new strain, and I doubt very much that will be the case, then it will have killed one one thousandth of the number that will die of flu anyway. So what's all this talk of a pandemic?
A bit of research shows that nobody other than the media is using the word pandemic. As least not in reference to this new strain. Experts throw around numbers about past pandemics, actual ones, and those numbers are indeed impressive. Around a million dead of the Hong Kong flu in 68/69, and from 40 million to 100 million for the Spanish Flu, but that lasted for 2 years, from 1918-1920. For all of the pandemics listed, a million seems to be the minimum number. So far around 100 people are dead, so it seems a little early to even be mentioning the possibility of a pandemic, let alone speculating about how many it might kill.
Add to this the fact that they have already found with this new flu that it attacks mostly people in the 20-40 age group, the group most likely to withstand the symptoms and recover. Therefore, even if it did become wide spread it would be reasonable to assume the death toll would be lower than any previous major outbreak.
Locally, New Zealand has had it's export pork banned by India and the Philippines despite the fact that it has been established that the infection is only passed in the air. 45% of Kiwis are convinced that the whole thing is a media scam. Nightly we're shown people in Mexico all wearing face masks everywhere they go. Health authorities are saying the masks are useless, but such is fear, people wear them anyway.
At any rate, the media has a lot to answer for and it occurs to me that there really isn't anyone they're accountable to. If governments tried to put a stop to the fear mongering they would simply cry freedom of the press. That's disingenuous though, this is not a matter of freedom to report, it's a question of moral responsibility and from where I stand, the press is getting more and more immoral everyday.
This is the Fourth Estate, the people who used to put themselves forward as the guardians of freedom. Now they seem to have become the people who are free from responsibility for their actions. There is no doubt in my mind that they have made the economic crisis worse with their constant refrains of doom and gloom, and now they appear to want to start a worldwide panic over a non-existent pandemic.
I read a survey not long ago about where the press as a profession rates in trustworthiness. They came in just below lawyers. That really should give them pause to consider, but I won't hold my breath.
