Reports warning that swine flu could kill up to 90,000 people have the network anchors swooning, but back in real world I, for one, am not moved by the histrionics.  It’s no secret Americans will believe pretty much anything if it’s thrown into a newspaper or on a TV screen, but the projected death toll from swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, is getting a bit ridiculous.

Mynews.com has reported that up to half the population of the United States could become infected with the virus and 90,000 deaths are possible.  The medical and technological leaders in this country are some of the smartest in the world, so why are they feeding such blatantly skewed information to the gullible masses?  CNN reports that since January, 13,000 people have died of regular flu and only 150 have died of H1N1.  In truth, scientific fear mongers probably have good intentions and feel that exaggerating the threat will make people take extra precautions to prevent infections.  But there has to be a rational balance between effective warnings for the public and a little something I call “reality.”

In the recent past we have been warned of epidemics and, thankfully, none of these dire predictions have come true.

The bird flu terror in 2006 and SARS virus in 2002 are two recent examples of viruses that had people sweating bullets but never amounted to anything of significance.   SARS was predicted to be a global  epidemic and bird flu was supposed to kill a quarter of all Britons.  Instead, their combined global death toll came to a shocking 1,031 people or .0000002% of the world population.  The West Nile virus also caused a stir when the first cases were reported in 2002.  In 2008, there were only 1,356 reported cases of West Nile, of which 44 people died.  The deaths are tragic, but hardly a pandemic.

I have to ask why we should take H1N1 predictions seriously when the experts have misled us so many times before?   One day there will be a disease with real potential to kill humans, but the warnings will be ignored because previous predictions were so unreliable.

Maybe it’s just the American way to be cautious and overprotective.  After all, the days where children could run around care free without parental lectures on bug repellant, sunscreen, and other protective ointments are long gone.  Those listening to the projected death toll, please, take a look at past epidemic scares and put the current warnings in context.

Max Ginther is a regular contributor to The DC Writeup

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