Well right there at the start was your problem. The media’s job to sell things. Informing doesn’t do that so well so they do fairly little of that as a general rule. Sex sells. Fear sells. Celebrity sells. Any story that cannot be made into one of those will get very little airtime. Best is to get all three into one story but you need at least one of those angles for a story to have legs. Discussing something as needing a graded, serious, and persistent response, neither “no worries” nor “panic we are all going to die!” without putting boobs or Brangelina or both into it? Be real. No body would watch.
So true. So when the Swine flu is about to get me I will be oblivious because the news coverage will kill me faster.
It’s Fort Worth Independent School District- 80,000 kids. They announced it last week.
You can find a story here.
On a related note, you can read an excellent article (at the Daily Kos of all places) explaining why yes, it is necessary to shut schools as early as possible to mitigate the spread of the virus. Wait until more people have it, and it’s too late to be useful (this, equally, is why it’s pointless shutting down air travel at this stage).
He said it was in Michigan, and this was before Ft. Worth announced the closing.
Yup.
When a cloud floats over my house, the news immediately flies into OMG A HUGE STORM IS COMING WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE mode…
It has gotten so bad that last year the news flashed that a tornado was on the ground and heading my way…that it was huge and killing people enmasse.
I went to bed. I just assumed they were mistaken/lying.
I was right. Woke up next morning…no tornado had touched down in the cities.
I’m serious…I didn’t even believe the news when they said I was in iminent danger of death…I just assumed they were wrong. If they had had pictures or something to confirm it…I would have listened. Otherwise, forget it.
You are kidding. Aren’t you.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090503/NEWS02/90503019/1004/Fears+over+flu+spark+more+schools+to+shut+down
I’ll provide it but I wont read it to you.
No. You can argue that it may be necessary. You can not say it is necessary. As a matter of fact it is not. But you do not want to look like you were not treating it without sufficient respect.
That was an article from today, which is several days after you made the claim. On top of that, I don’t see a lot of evidence that those schools will be closed for much more than a week, though I can’t tell when some of them initially made the decision Some may be over that amount.
pointless…
I like posts that are short, sharp and right to the point.
Oh, well, that’s all right then. Do you want to ring up the WHO or shall I?
"Hey guys, there’s some schmuck here who says you’re all wrong and to stop doing stuff. Yes, I know you’re actual epidemiologists, but this guy has to be right. Reasons? No, he didn’t give any reasons, but he did say it’s a ‘matter of fact’, and you can’t argue with that, can you? Yeah, I showed him the graphs. Yep, and the historical data and all that. But I mean, if you’ve seen all that and still stick to your guns, you’ve pretty much got to be right, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“Oh, he also gives mortgage advice; I’ll give you his number.”
I think you guys are making light of this serious situation. In my state alone 1 in every 260,000 people has a confirmed case of this flu. Your risk of getting this flu is greater than being anally probed by aliens, molested by clowns, or anally probed by clowns, and you’re all saying that this is no big deal?
When you’re the one in a quarter million to contact this virus, you won’t be laughing, now will you.
Well, not without triggering a giant coughing fit.
Or without a major news story to take over.
Not even an oink of Swine flu on New Zealand news since Thursday beause there was a real crisis/news story.
Have you woken up yet? Are you still hiding in your bunker terrified of a non event?
Even a stupid pig finds the occasional truffle, gonzomax.
I’m not sure I agree. While we all would wish that our politicians stay focused on the real problems. It is probably all too common for them to attempt to “do something” or show “leadership” on a potential problem rather than actually deal with the real problem.
When the crisis fails to materialize they can say that their swift decisive action helped and if it does appear they can at least claim that they tried to do something.