Photo credit: be_khe from Flickr
Everyone is talking about the swine flu right now. It’s the big pandemic scare of 2009. Google is even tracking its progress around the world using this map.
Now, I’m not making light of the situation but with the proliferation of social media tools like Twitter, it’s just as easy to spread helpful information around the world as it is to spread some pretty crazy misinformation.
So, when @jennbelle overhears a woman say “Call me overcautious but no bacon, I don’t want to risk swine flu”, we may poke fun but where there’s one woman thinking that, there are surely others.
Let’s get some facts—or at least one fact—straight here: swine flu, or any flu for that matter, is not transmitted through the consumption of the object used to describe the type of flu. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. You can’t catch this new strain of flu by eating pork products. You couldn’t catch bird flu by eating poultry. Heck, you can’t even spontaneously start speaking Spanish by catching Spanish influenza.
I understand that sometimes we have these moments where we say things without thinking them through, but this is a fear that many people have. Like the avian bird flu scare before, carnivores across North America and perhaps even around the world will be opting for other meats in the weeks and months to come. They might even switch back to eating more poultry now that there’s no such thing as avian flu anymore (or at least it’s fallen from the headlines). I’m not urging people to continue to eat meat but what I am calling for is a little bit of reason here. How do you think people contract regular human flus? Through cannibalism? No. So, why would it be different with animals?
The only way it could be foreseeable for one to contract an animal-related flu through the consumption of said creature is if one were eating at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (a.k.a. Milliways) and the Ameglian Major Cow you just conversed with sneezed on you.
In the wise words of Douglas Adams: DON’T PANIC!
As a side note, mark your calendars! May 25 is Towel Day, a tribute to Douglas Adams.
Kimberly Walsh is a social media and online community manager. You can follow her on Twitter @AliasGrace.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said. I don’t want to downplay the disease, either, but I’m sure there are more cases of cancer and AIDS diagnosed in North America each day than there are of swine flu and it’s not like we have daily headlines screaming about those (although maybe we should!!) It seems like just another way for Joe Sixpack to be kept in a state of fear and distraction…
Bread and circus, you know?
Racquel: Good points. I’d really like to know what the psychology behind fear mongering in the media is (e.g. impact on human psyche and sales). With the social tools available and all the citizen journalists out there too, how do we find a balance between informing and simply spreading fear/misinformation?
It’s terrible that I keep hearing many people talk out loud about their fears of pork products in the wake of six cases of swine flu. Six. Out of how many million Canadians? In an age where it’s so easy to share information, you’d think less people would panic needlessly because they have so many ways to get informed about the latest disease or situation. However, all this mass media coverage seems to breed more misinformation. What a strange Catch-22.
Jenn: It’s really bizarre how irrational fear makes people. The rate at which information can move on this planet seems to be both a blessing and a curse at this point. This isn’t mad cow disease which is related to the consumption of a diseased animal. It’s the flu. An air-borne disease. Even vegetarians can catch it.
did you hear the interview on the Current this morning about the “risk industries” have have vest interests in Code Orange type scaring peeps.
What’s going to happen when WHO runs out of numbers? Ok, now it’s a global pandemic, of flu.
I have a sneaking sensation that the folks of produce Tamiflu have more to do with this than any virus.
Gifted: I didn’t catch that but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out there’s a pharmaceutical connection to, not the outbreaks, but the hype surrounding them.