Swine Flu & the Media

I am not thinking about Swine flu these days. Well, the situation was very different 3 weeks back, thanks largely to the extra attention paid by the media to this pandemic. I still remember my childhood days when the elder males in the house used to religiously listen to the news on All India Radio or sit in front of TV for DD news in the evening to be in tune with the latest. As we know, the world has changed a lot since then. There are innumerable 24X7 TV news channels and it is interesting to note how they influence our psyche these days.

Swine Flu was the hot topic on all news channels and was on the front pages on all national newspapers. The coverage was important but if the media had taken a balanced approach and also focussed on some positives then some of the panic could have been avoided. The reports were mainly around number of positive cases & deaths but there was hardly any information on the number of recoveries. A statement reported in media from our health minister on 33% of Indian population getting affected by this virus did not help either. Surprisingly there was very little on the preventive & precautionary measures which is what media should have focussed on big time. All this led to a huge panic and everyone rushing to the limited test centers to get tested even for mildest of symptoms. People (including me) completely stopped going to crowded places, kids were not sent to schools, travel plans were cancelled and so on.

Not much has changed since then in terms of the situation. Swine Flu continues to be a big problem around the world. India now has around 140 officially reported H1N1 casualties with a few reported very day. More than 5000 people have been infected in India alone and mind you, this is the official number. Around 3500 people have died all over the world so far because of this deadly virus. Situation does not seem to be getting better. However, many people (including me) have come to terms with this and the panic has greatly come down. Well, it maybe the inherent compromising human nature but a significantly lower coverage of this flu in media has also greatly helped. As I mentioned, it is interesting to note the role of media in everyday life.

Having said that, let us all hope & pray that the most complex machines we all have (our bodies) come to our rescue and humans develop the required immunity to counter this huge threat that this pandemic has posed.

:PM

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