The Media and Influenza A

Well it looks like the this Wood Mouse has caused a bit of a stir over the Influenza A as it has now officially been labelled. While I can understand people being concerned by this new strain of flu, I think I can now see why there is a major difference in the attitude between American and British responses. As I have previously said in Europe, seasonal flu causes two thousand five hundred deaths. Yet in America seasonal flu causes thirty six thousand deaths per year. That is not to say that the flu is more virulent in the US but just how unequal the health care system is in America.

This understanding helps me comprehend the fear that this Influenza A is causing in the US and some of the alarmist reporting by the media.

Now for me this begs the question of why the media is not kicking up a real stink about the poor and unequal provision of Health Care in the US. Could it be that the media don't want to upset the Drug Companies who are advertisers?

Here in Britain there are rare pockets of a sane, balanced, and Independent media. I am well aware that initial reports were showing a very high mortality rate. But even from these early reports the statistics did not sound right. In the 1918/19 Pandemic the upper estimate for the deaths it caused is fifty million. Therefore the early reports of 150 or 160 deaths from this new H1N1 was seriously alarming. However, the scientists and doctors from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), in Atlanta Georgia, are looking at the real causes of the deaths in Mexico and the confirmed number so far (as reported by the BBC) is twelve (12). And at the moment statistical it appears that the mortality rate is less than one tenth of one percent.

While those deaths are individual tragedies for news papers to run headlines like The Whole of humanity is under threat as the sun did here, is alarmist. Equally I do not want the press to be complacent and fail to provide the information that people need to help protect themselves.

The problem with the Media is that they are reporting as fact data and information that turns out to be wrong. Thus people develop a reaction that is based upon incorrect data, the reaction becomes disproportionate to the risk.

The Media's role is to provide accurate information and as I do here, I check the facts. While I know that I am human and can make mistakes, and I am well aware that the main stream media can make mistakes too. But with Influenza A sections of the media have acted irresponsibly, creating alarm and panic were it need not be created, by reporting information that they know is untrue.

In time the readers here will know if this Influenza A is the deadly pandemic that the media are painting it as or a pandemic that makes people a bit ill. I have no doubt that it will be a pandemic but just how deadly it is, well the jury is still out on that one.

As I have said previously, the real danger has yet to come and and will result from this virus recombining with the H5N1 in Asia. This Crying Wolf now, will deaden the reaction when the real threat emerges.

I wish that the media would actually rant and rave about the real disease killers like Malaria, the real killer in the world. Oh but that effects people in poor countries and we don't worry about them. In the US the media should be railing about the unequal provision of health care. Just before Barack Obama was sworn in as president there was a documentary that showed the American poor having to visit a clinic, set up by a British Charity. The Charity was set up to provide clinics for the poor in Latin America, but discovered that there was greater need in the US. Further the charity could provide the greatest benefit by running clinics in America. If and when the Americanised media start reporting on the reality of Health Care in the US then the hysterical reporting of this Influenza A can be forgiven.

There is one simple measure of just how serious the danger is, and that is the Mexican Boarder. If the Influenza threat was a deadly one, the boarder would be closed to stop the spread. the Mexican Boarder remains open.

I fully understand my main critic on this topic, I consider her a friend, but based upon carrying out my own fact checking, I can not see any justification for the alarmist reporting here in Britain. In the United States the press coverage has been much more about generating advertising revenue for products like Tamiflu than about Informing and Educating. There the real story is that the poor are at greater risk, but the reporting has been geared to the “Worried Well” and getting them to buy products and medicines they do not need.