Swine flu

[cjsmith]

My information about the swine flu situation comes from two sources:

1) the WHO web site and the people who link to it

2) LJ and Facebook people going AAAAAAH NOBODY PANIC! STOP PANICKING! SERIOUSLY, CUT IT OUT RIGHT NOW!

Has anybody seen anybody panicking? The news may be full of stories describing panic; note the total lack of traditional news media in my info list above. Has anyone here seen or talked to someone who was off their nut about it?

Comments

[curmudgn]

Opinion at my workplace is that while there may well be a threat (and the ones hardest to sell on the idea there is a threat are the ones who are old enough to remember the '76 go-round with swine flu), a large amount of the media hysteria is driven by their unending need to fill up a 24-hour-a-day news cycle with SOMEthing.

To put it as someone put it to me today: "the economy looks like it's beginning to stabilize, the wars aren't flaring up, there aren't any pirates to watch at the moment, health care and the budget are still a ways off, so let's have a nice round of OMGKillerGermsAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHH today!"

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I wonder what it's like to try to fill up a television channel when not much nearby is awful or horrific. Heck, sometimes it must be hard to fill it up when there IS something awful or horrific, but without much new information about it available. I don't envy those folk their jobs. I'm an introvert (those in the peanut gallery, quit laughing; I'm majorly introverted) and would just want to say "OK, we're shutting down until something happens."