The last few weeks have witnessed an obsessively incessant paranoia about swine flu. From mass quarantines to entire states declaring shutdowns, signs of people's fear are everywhere. Aren't we over-reacting, to say the least. I mean, come on, more people die of regular influenza every day, which is just as contagious. And an even larger number die every 3 hours of tuberculosis, which again falls into the highly contagious category. And I am not even talking road accidents yet. I seem to remember a similar scare following the Avian influenza outbreak and the SARS epidemic. I guess people do get scared and panic easily given this level of hoopla. Some might reprimand me for being insensitive and remind me that the diseases did claim lives. True. And so have cholera and drunken driving. I had intended to argue, by way of this post, that being so totally paranoid is not really rational, but halfway I realized I am just terribly missing Iced Tea (serving of any cold drinks has been suspended everywhere on campus as a precautionary measure).
Yeah that's the sign at Basera :(
hmmm i too miss iced tea which was in my daily habits now... i think they are trying to break our addictions :P
ReplyDeleteread in a mail somewhere that gilead sciences (the patent holders for tamiflu till 2016) have made loads of money through this paranoia... this was the same and only drug administered effective for avain flu as well... it was suggested that this virus could have been spread by the pharma company itself based in US to make money which cannot be totally neglected when such big names in the US defence support this company... and considering all the media hype created when even being an epidemic for months the rate of lives claimed is so less compared to other diseases like TB... the odds of dying in your bath tub were 3 times more than this...
and why do these diseases originate in the third world countries or places whr these people expt with humans to check their drugs... avian flu started from cambodia in south east asia... swine flu starts from mexico...
Lots of people do believe the excessive share of spotlight devoted to such cases as being a propaganda of the Western powers that be to check and contain the growth of the rapidly growing developing nations. I remember reading an article sometime in 2005 about the SARS scare being a means to hurt the Chinese and South East Asian tiger economies; their export industry as well as their tourism business suffered drastically following the SARS outbreak
ReplyDeleteI am sneezing.
ReplyDelete@ arjun
ReplyDeleteyah, the 'piggy flu' is infact a 'piggy bank' for certain companies
@ shruti
the highlight of the post for me was 'I mean, come on,..'
Typical your style of talking ;)
I agree that our mighty little piggy has been bestowed with way too much media attention but lets not undermine its power. Anything which kills should be dreaded!
ReplyDelete@ Apurv
ReplyDeleteyou okay?
media has been successful in making you paranoid for sure.
@Kay Gee:
ReplyDeleteI have been exposed to as less "media-generated" paranoia as there can be. I just mean that we give the virus the respect it deserves and not be complacent about it. Also, but for the aggressive media awareness created, most people in our country would have blamed the mysterious deaths on the work of some witchcraft and would have thrashed and banished innocent people of their community. (Refer: TOI 23/08/2009)
:P hehe ya the knowledge is important but spreading of panic is not a acceptable... even the name is wrong poor pigs are blamed when its not a virus originating from swines
ReplyDeleteone more doubt... why is the time showing as AM when we have posted it now :|
ReplyDelete@tornado: The author of this post is to be blamed for both, viz., for spoiling the name of swines and also for not setting up date/time properly on the blog!
ReplyDeleteya lets sue her :P
ReplyDeleteNice insight..about the other fatal but neglected diseases, cunning pharmaceutical companies, speculated involvement of strategic western powers.
ReplyDeleteAside..
1. This post adds to the publicity.
2. This post took birth bcoz you weren't getting access to cold stuff inside the campus.
vs
1. People died.
Think the latter wins :)
@Arjun,Kg, Apurv: saari wing lukkhi hai kya?
ReplyDelete@cl: Whatever be the reasons for my outbursts and cribs, the fact remains that the H1N1 associated frenzy is not really called for.
Your point that people died is correct, but then a way larger number of people die of innumerable deadlier as well as unnatural causes, dont see a comparable response there.
Paranoia of this this degree is not required. There is a difference between caution and panic, the former being backed by logic- something that's missing in a lot of steps being taken to apparently 'curb' the menace. The probability of someone in our campus catching the virus is way higher in classrooms and labs than while practicing in SAC.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletecaution or panic. Its better than the response to Cholera/Tuberculosis/other diseases in India.
ReplyDeleteI think hostel wise screening has begun already, which is logical and MBBS degree holders would better reasons for curbing cold juices than me, atleast.
SAC - :O
Either ways, something better than nothing, and the percieved 'logicism' of the methods seems to be tending away from zero.
Glad I don't have pig disease :)
Check this, has some insights into the apparently illogical abolition of cold things:
ReplyDeletehttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/IIT-juice-counter-shut-over-flu-threat/articleshow/4930525.cms
Aside, Times should get a life!!
Psssst: Ice-creams are available at shopping centre!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Shurutee: Instead of commenting on the vettiness of our wing, you should participate in the discussion. Its your blog, after all!
ReplyDeleteI didnt care to see if I was the only person who was disagreeing with you (and all the cynics), but there are reasons why it's more scary
ReplyDelete1. AIDS, TB, Cholera dont spread that easily (airborne, and no contact needed)
2. Note that most people who die of any diseases you considered are the lower classes of society. However, swine flu has most victims in the upper/middle class. In a way that's bad, coz it means that malls, theatres, middle-class public places which were earlier safe from the other diseases, might not be right now. In a way that's good, coz if it had hit the lower classes, then it would be a terrible epidemic (1 servant with swine flu wud spread it to 10 households and 10 other servants).
So, yeah, I believe that whenever you have an argument, you should have the metrics suitably constant. Here, I'm afraid, drunken driving, etc don't really fall into the category of swine flu because of the above reasons (and maybe more), and hence I think the argument is weak.
I however agree that it is an awesome opportunity for the tamiflu ppl and all medics/pharma companies. Yeah, all the capitalism, extracting money out of panic, etc arguments hold. But, I don't think the swine flu is something to ignore, though it might be very easy to write a critical article about it :)
And I'd correct you when you mention that more people die of "regular influenza" everyday. As you'd know, the common cold and influenza are different diseases caused by different viruses. When influenza complicates to pneumonia (rare), then it can kill.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason why crazy forms of influenza are different from TB, etc is that symptoms are difficult to differentiate the "normal" flu from the variations (but TB is detectable, and anyway is more common among elderly and youth, and doesn't affect the others too much - rare, I mean).
In conclusion, the actual dangerous forms of influenza are avian flu, swine flu, etc, which people are rightly scared of (as such epidemics have killed millions in the 20th century itself). Wikipedia will help to scare you :)
Wow, with this response and hit-rate, I should make a move towards trying to collect ad revenue :D
ReplyDeleteI guess I should have stuck to my original plan of cursing the damn piggies for not listening to their moms and catching cold :(.
Call me selfish but I really do miss Iced tea :(.
And no, I am not being insensitive to those who died or are suffering from H1N1.
its a cri-blog post
ReplyDeleteI neither called you selfish nor insensitive :)
ReplyDeleteJust called your argument, about why it shouldn't be such a big issue, weak.
And ya, no harm in having ads :P
Not eveywhere on campus.. i believe cc still sells cold stuff..
ReplyDeleteYou might do well to read more about the history of "the great influenza" of 1918-19 (which was from H1N1), esp. about how mild it was when it started out, after which an EXTREMELY virulent form developed and claimed tens of millions of lives. So, saying "I don't see that it IS so bad" rather misses the point. It's more - 'what might it BECOME, and how prepared are we to deal with it IF that happens again?'
ReplyDelete(To get some sense and science of this, I highly recommend John N. Barry's 2004 book, *The Great Influenza*.)