I can feel the germs spreading towards me from Mexico – they’re getting closer by the news update!
For a week or so Swine Flu has been intruding on my conscious as breathless, doom-laden sound bites track the spread of the “epidemic” from South of the Border to Uncle Sam, north and east to Canada and will Old Blighty suffer?
My daughter emailed me earlier with a touching missive:
“Daddy I hope you don’t get affectioned by the flu tell me you are alright.”
I called her back that day and made pig noises in between blowing my nose down the phone while she told me off for being embarassing – that’s my girl!
Therein lies the rub – a 10 year old in the UK worried about her old dad on the East Coast of America 3,000 miles from a pig cold originating out of Mexico. What price information with the potential to create mass manic panic by use of mass media pandering to basic, inbuilt human fears?
Mass media is important in our world, I wouldn’t live without it by choice but is there no alternative way of communicating news without trying to generate the hysteria which will generate ratings? News used to mean something, it was a ritual in my grandparents lives to watch the news at a fixed time to get their fix and from my tender memories Reginald Bosanquet and Alastair Cooke had something to say.
It was called news for a reason.
If a pig in clover so much as reaches for the Kleenex there will be a camera crew on site before you can say “CDC” (Center for Disease Control for the non-Americans here).
The result of all this media activity is obvious when looking at my emails. My email has been slowly filling up with “cures” for Swine Flu (or H1N1) if only I will part with my bank or credit card details and there is now serious competition as to whether Viagra, Nigerian fraud mail or H1N1 will win the battle for top of the spam – thinking about this; a pig cold winning the battle of the spam – that has to be a certain winner!
Oink! Oink! Boom!
(My version of a flying pig breaking the sound barrier)
The Keybasher 