It hasn't even been a week since the Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency due to the novel strain of Swine Influeza A (April 26, 09). It feels like it's been a lot longer for me since I work in the field of public health and we take this kind of thing seriously. The media is also taking this seriously as they provide constant updates on the swine flu cases in the U.S. and abroad. The name, swine flu, makes for a novel news story. The novel strain - accurately called H1N1 - is of swine orgin, meaning it jumped from swine to human then mutated to transfer from human to human; so it's not correct to call the current virus "swine flu" since really it's no longer a swine flu virus. But hey, sounds exciting and scary in the news and we as humans (not swine) are drawn to exciting and scary. I'm surprised though that media is actually referring to it as H1N1 more frequently, but then again, what the heck does H1N1 really mean to the average non scientist...still kinda scary right? Just picture H1N1 is big print against a black background with doom do doom doom doooooom theme music playing on TV-scary right? I'm not convinced media is undergoing a transformation where being a watchdog for society is now taking front and center stage. I think that if it's going to make a dollar then it's going make the news. Plan and simple, it's about the ratings folks and H1N1 is MONEY!!!!
