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catastrophe, coming soon to a television near you

I was talking about the bird flu thing with my girlfriend a few days ago, and I made the comment that I think alot of the hype about it is just that: hype. The media, I said, needs something to scream about 24/7, and avian flu just happens to be the topic du jour. She was sceptical of my scepticism, so I guess that raises the question: How panicked should I be?

After all, there are a lot of important people talking about this. The secretary of Agriculture is telling us to stock up on tuna. Some guy on the radio last week said we were looking at a 50/50 chance of the flu going human to human.

Then again, Newt Gingrich said there's only a two or three percent chance. But then again, what the fuck does Newt Gingrich know? My pet cockatiel knows more about bird flu than he does.

There's talk of wiping out upwards of thirty percent of humanity off the map, and higher. But so far, only...what, 150, 200 people have been hit? On a global scale, that isn't exactly a crisis; besides, most of those cases came from people noshing on stray fowl that made the mistake of landing in their back yard. I suspect garden-variety food poisioning has killed more people than that over the past few weeks. Do a google news search on "Bird Flu Casualties", and the biggest news is how many people haven't died, delivered in the breathless tone of impending disaster.

Scanning the news reports, the best fact-based analysis I can find is this: We Officially Have No Fucking Clue. Avian flu could be spoken of by our descendants the way we talk about Plauges of Locusts, or it could be over before we know it, doing less damage than Ted Nugent on a good weekend.

But it's all described and delivered in a manner that, in a movie, would require an extra-badass badguy: Wagnerian bumper music, ominous graphics of peaked-looking chickens, Serious people speaking serious nothings in serious tones.

It all looks like a big cya-game. Nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen, so all the hacks get out there and make sure everybody knows that they have no idea what is going to happen, and if what does happen is bad then they opposed it, whatever it is. Add to that the constant need for media crisis (See: Potential casualties of Iraq war, mass murder post-Katrina, and, most especially, Y2Friggin'K) and I somehow feel less than compelled to go into full-on pants-crapping mode, stocking up on tuna (which will also kill you, except when it won't) and building a flu-proof shelter under the woodshed.

How many times, over the past, say, ten years, has the media predicted a world-changing catastrophe? How many times have they been accurate? People make fun of the weather man's accuracy, but meterologists are the Oracle of Freaking Delphi compared to the talking heads on Sunday morning shows. The biggest catastrophes I can think of came completely out of the blue upon an unsuspecting populace, which the media would then rush in and try to make look a whole lot worse than it really was.

Every newsroom on earth should be wallpapered with those ever-perfect words from the Hitchhiker's Guide: DON'T PANIC. That should be the banner on every major newspaper, exept, of course, that that wouldn't sell. Fear and Panic are what sells copy, so by god, go find some someplace.

Having said all that, the guy with the bird-proof bombshelter has every right to laugh in my face through his biohazard suit as I lay dying of Avian Flu. Someday, maybe paranoia really will pay off, as they keep telling us it will in the movies and media. But that kind of paranoia takes some serious energy, and right now, it's time for lunch.

Posted by Francis at March 22, 2006 04:01 AM | TrackBack