The world has gone mad. Schools are closing, companies sending staff home, and people panicking. And I firmly believe the media are feeding this fear. mybloggingplanet.com/2014/10/contact-us-page-in-blogger.html
A few days ago I posted a blog post that showed that the statistics for swine flu are the same as for normal seasonal flu. It is no more severe than an ordinary bout of flu, but the way people are reacting, you would think the black death was upon us again.
As proof of this, a few days ago, there was a poll on news24.com as to whether the government should get out of the “Don’t panic” mindset and into the “Let’s start panicking” mindset. The results were overwhelming towards panicking.
The media is reporting in such a way that it seems that every death from swine flu heralds the doom of society. More people die every day from normal flu complications, TB or AIDS than swine flu is even capable of, yet no-one locks themselves away scared of TB, for example, which is also infectious.
Even at my work, and Cole’s school, letters have gone round on how to minimise the risk of contracting swine flu, and guess what, the guidelines are the same as if you had normal flu. If someone has flu, they should be at home and out of contact of people, and people coming into contact with them should be washing hands and being careful to avoid infection.
But do you think people care about the normal flu? No. It kills thousands of people a year, yet no=one thinks twice about going to work with normal flu……but because swine flu has hit the news, suddenly you should be quarantined.
What people need is a little bit of perspective, and for goodness sake, STOP listening to the sensationalistic media!
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