Swine flu media coverge is taking on an electronic/print pandemic.
It began in April; with a much publicized outbreak of several cases in Mexico; subsided in spring and has now spread fast over the last part of summer. Next to the health-care debate and town hall meetings, its become a major topic in the day's news cycles.
While most of the coverage has been relatively informative and useful, other aspects have been nothing short of well-coordinated hysteria and misinformation put out by careless media outlets.
Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization's director-general, declared a "public health emergency of international concern" under the rules of the WHO's new International Health Regulations in April. As cases subsided overseas and here in the states, the H1N1 coverage soon took a back seat to other concerns and disappeared off the media map.
Now that summer is ending in three weeks and fall is beckoning, the media onslaught of the story has begun again in earnest. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that people should expect "a big influx" of swine flu cases this fall and prepare as best they can.
Reasonable enough, but could not the administration coordinate an information process via media oulets to inform the public on when they can expect the vaccine shots to be available? Where people can go if they have limited or no health care insurance? Just how dire is this flu strain perceived? We're not getting a whole lot of information on this matter. We've heard a lot of "what ifs", "what might happens", and overall many people are outright confused.
It shouldn't have to be this way. For what seemed like an eternity, both electronic media and government worked for months prepping people on the conversion from analogue to high-definition TV broadcasting. The government and broadcast officials laid out a specific plan for citizens to adapt to the new system. Too bad they couldn't handle the Swine flu information with the tenacity and accuracy they did in the HD switch-over.
Right now, many of us don't have a real, pardon the expression, 'pulse, on this subject. It's in the back of our minds and we don't know whether to be fully alarmed or push it aside as just a normal case of medical jitters. And that's just the problem. Our media isn't helping. Almost every other day, we get conflicting accounts of the potential lethalness to this particular influenza.
We deserve better. Basic information would be welcome. Hysteria, we don't need.
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