Planes, Trains and Swine Flu.

Ok. Alright. Back at it! Returning from a momentary hiatus: gratefully not from swine flu or anything! Although, over my last month of traveling I have seen my fair-share of face masks, travel warnings, and hand sanitizer sell-out sprees.

A little over a month ago my girlfriend and I left for the East Coast -- New York to be exact. In the days leading up to our departure I had been perusing some of the new reports of "swine flu" that had been occurring in Mexico. And by this time, a young boy and a young girl in San Diego had been confirmed with this new influenza strain. 

Then, as you all know, it hit: the pandemonium! Well, I didn't quite know at first. My girlfriend and I were less than vigilant about reading the news in our first days in NY. It was vacation. We were riding bikes around Manhattan and seeing shows in the East Village. News what? Plus, at the friend's house we stayed at we really had no access to TV or Internet.

But then it happened, I turned on CNN in our comfy, newly, checked in-to hotel! Duh, Duhn, Duhhhhhnnn: "Swine Flu and You: Pandemic hits level 3...no 4, now 5!" (exaggerated excerpt from CNN). I immediately started throwing my things back into my suitcase, put a garbage bag over my face and headed for home. Just kidding. Although, I think Vice President Biden offered similar advice to those who were considering traveling.

Swine Flu. That's it. That's all the news was talking about. Oh, and don't travel to Mexico. Don't let Mexicans travel to the US. Don't speak to Mexican's. Don't make eye-contact with Mexican's. Pandemic level is high. Look at us we are covering the news. We have terrifyingly important information and without it you might die?!

This is just a classic example of how news agencies intentionally perverse a subject and for what? Ratings? For example, lets take the World Health Organization's pandemic rating system. The system has six rankings. One being low human risk of acquiring the disease while six means there is sustained human to human spread of the disease. That's fine. It is good to know when a flu-strain has the ability to transfer itself from person to person. But that isn't exactly what the news agencies were telling us. They just liked to throw that five out of six ranking our there and say pandemic whenever possible. Pandemic is one of those words that just sound threatening. It's almost as if it's an onomatopoeia for "shit hitting the fan".

But back to the ranking system. Level five: significant human to human transmission in at least two countries. That is the level where we are currently at. I don't think the news agencies cared to acknowledge that based on that classification many diseases are a five out of six: the seasonal flu, herpes, aids. And that's not to say it isn't significant. But the news agencies made it seem like this was some uber-all powerful disease where they had to break out the pandemic scale for the first time just to get a grasp of how significant this was.

Also, at the time of the initial reports, there was a free-flow of the word "death" in the news. Now, I don't want to dismiss those deaths that have occurred. It is both sad and unfortunate that people have died during the spread of swine flu. However, the extent to which death has occurred is small in context to even the seasonal flu. According to the CDC approximately 36,000 people die from "seasonal" flu-related causes. To contrast, to date 95 people have died from swine flu.

Although I am sure all the news agencies would love to take credit for what seems to be a downturn in swine flu right now, these types of purposeful distortions perpetuated by them are largely unhelpful and irresponsible. A calm, clear iteration of what swine flu is, what the pandemic level actually means and its comparison to the seasonal flu could have been just as helpful. Plus, it could have avoided needless anxiety and questionable statements regarding Mexico and Mexicans. I am sure they understand that, but that doesn't matter to them. 

So I will do it for them: Swine flu is a new strain of influenza which means that most people around the world have not built up a immunity to it yet. This makes the average person a little more susceptible to catching the disease. At this point there is human to human transmission with low mortality (approximately 95 people have died). Those who have died had other medical complications that had already weakened their immune systems.To contrast, the seasonal flu is also transmitted via human to human interaction with about 36,000 flu related deaths per year. Wash your hands frequently and cover your mouth when sneezing or coughing. And if you don't feel comfortable traveling to Mexico then don't. If that's the case you may not want to travel around your neighborhood either considering the US has 2,000 more confirmed cases of swine flu than Mexico does.

- m.tsang