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In 1976, President Gerald Ford authorized the National Influenza Immunization Program to inoculate every American against an impending swine flu epidemic. But despite government predictions of one million dead, a single confirmed fatality was recorded by the end of the year. Science writer Patrick Di Justo remembers the last time the media developed a fever over a mild case of the flu.
I think poorly of On the Media's coverage of the so-called Swine Flu pandemic and the lurid headlines in every major newspaper of the Republic. Each day of the preceding week, all the evening network news broadcasts led with reports of this incipient plague, the sole exception being the day Mr. Justice Souter announced his retirement. After that story was disposed of, and in all the local news broadcasts, it was all Swine Flu, all the time.
Reported cases were treated as being confirmed cases, and no exaggeration was too gaudy if it kept viewers eager to hear of this plague of Biblical proportions glued to the set. Once the meager and nonexistent facts had been exhausted, all broadcast news offered idiotic suggestions on how to survive this plague -- esoteric and expert advice from physicians that we should wash our hands frequently and cover our mouths when we cough. (Yeah, right. Like that'll stop it.)
The result is that Americans panicked. The local pharmacist told me that some woman came in and purchased his entire stock of surgical masks. At the nearby diner, speculation abounded that the epidemic was the work of terrorists.
No US citizen has died from the Swine Flu, but meanwhile, another disease, a disease completely ignored by the press, broadcast news, and On the Media, was killing 800 victims per week. This other disease (not discussed by On the Media) has claimed 13,000 deaths since January, and continues to kill more each day.
What is this killer disease? On the Media did not think to mention it, so I'll tell you here. It's the ordinary seasonal influenza, which claims 30,000 lives (more-or-less) a year, each year, but that's not newsworthy.
By reverting to banal coverage of the 1976 Swine Flu panic, On the Media fumbled the ball on this story.
Come on! On every other media outlet, numerous times since this Mexican outbreak, I have been reminded of the 30,000 a year lost to seasonal flu. What strikes me as interesting is that it seems likely that the panic induced by Ford led to the current National Influenza Immunization Program, which saves innumerable lives every year, unless something such a Bush administration comes along to totally screw it up, as they did a couple of times, as memory serves.
Speaking of Ford and how many U.S. Presidents he could fit into the trunk of his Chrysler, my home health aide, Michelle Tucker, told me a good one, yesterday. In the African-American community, a long-standing question and answer had been, “When we ever going to see a Black President?” “When pigs fly!”, “Swine flew,” Michelle, then, smiled.
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