The enormous proportions of the swine-flu scare is beginning to annoy me so much. It is so frustrating that the media decides to grab on to anything it can find on order to feed any weakness it can spot in even the most grounded of humans. Because that is what media is doing. Instead of clearly providing us with purse facts, it feeds our weakest spots, it taps in to our deepest fears and nightmares by painting a horrible apocalypse of death and gloom that will turn seemingly rational and realistic people in to irrational and highly volatile beings. And although it is clear that there are cases where this flu, as with all flu's, tragically have led to death, the fact of the matter is that the swine-flu, as all flu's, is mostly a nasty, annoying, energy-draining case of....well, the flu. I have never had respect for the type of journalism that will happily exchange facts for stories, and sadly, there seem to be a lot of exchanging done right now.
So, swine-flu. Shall we lock ourselves up, leave the country? It is a good thing I have a ´n earthquake kit in the garage, because, if you believe the news, or rather, people who read the news, it is high time to stock up on the rice-roni and canned spaghetti hoops, that is what one mother in my playgroup is doing this week. Just in case the government will proclaim nation-wide evacuation, or something...
In my playgroup I also heard comments such as:
- My son's friends all have Mexican nannies/I live in a neighborhood with a very high Mexican population. Do we need to move out/get our flu-shots/stop playing in the park/not leave the house?
It's time for a serious reality check.
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