Days of Swine and Noses

By Ray Richmond

You can always tell when a television news anchor is feeling disappointment. The left eyebrow (to the viewer’s right) begins to perceptibly twitch, and the monotone takes on a subtle edge of angst. Usually, this can be discerned when the anchor is reporting that a local shooting resulted in injury but no deaths, or that cancer rates had dropped, or that a predicted violent thunderstorm would now be bypassing the area. And just watch that eyebrow whenever any hurricane is downgraded to a tropical depression. It’s Twitch City, baby.

I saw the twitch erupt anew with great intensity on Friday when one local news gal announced that 19 more kids in the U.S. had died from the Swine Flu in the week ending Aug. 24, bringing the total number of kids who have succumbed to the virus to 114 since it first erupted in April. It seemed clear enough that the anchor felt these numbers were paltry, not at all adequate, an indication of a mere plague wannabe – a wussy killer if ever there was one.

But you could tell the anchor was still trying her very best to push the panic button and play the terror card, even as she worked to mask her disappointment that the 19 wasn’t 19,000 and use of the word “pandemic” wasn’t itself a form of vast overkill.

(It’s always a hoot to watch anchors try, like small children, to use their big words. The vacant look in the bleach-blonde’s eyes as she recites terms from the TelePrompTer like ”referendum” and “callow” is also very much there as she repeats “pandemic,” convinced as she is that it has something to do with infections stemming from the reckless use of cookware. Call it, “One Flu Over the Anchor’s Desk.”)

This is all brought up now, of course, because in terms of disasters of our time and its telegenic value, the H1N1 virus (evidently so-named because “R2D2” already was taken) is an immense underperformer. Particularly as we head into the ratings sweeps month of November, this thing has yet – if you’ll pardon the expression – to go viral. Instead, it’s just a big fat hunk of scaremongering hype. As an effective means of inciting terror in the populace, it’s proving more DOA than HIV, more pig-in-a-poke than porcine-fueled pandemonium.



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting that a lousy 800 people or so had died of the Swine Flu. Let’s compare this to the 50 million people worldwide who died during the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918-19, which represented 3% of the entire global population of 1.6 billion at the time. That was more than three times the 16 million who had been killed during WWI.

In a normal flu year in the U.S., some 40 to 50 kids typically die. This year, it’s looking as if it could wind up being four or five times that number, which is naturally tragic…but on a decidedly small scale. It’s still pretty small potatoes when you consider that more than 30,000 people, mostly kids, succumb to diarrhea each year in Kenya alone. More than 1,000 kids will die in car accidents in the United States this year. But no one is sounding that alarm to keep them out of harm’s way by walking or riding their bicycles instead.

Yet you can understand the palpable frustration of a television news culture for which death is life and chaos in manna from the Gods. It’s always been true that if it bleeds it leads. But it’s conversely turning out to be true that if it merely sniffles, it fizzles. Try as they might, their sensationalistic approach isn’t working this time. People aren’t wearing masks in public. The paranoia factor isn’t inspiring folks to view social interaction as lethal in itself, or to remain indoors and watch more news about why they need to remain indoors and watch more news.

On the other hand, here’s a new theory for ya: Maybe it’s our natural isolation in the Internet age that’s helping limit the spread of a flu virus whose milder virulence could well be tied to its more restricted exposure.

We don’t need a national quarantine when we’re already essentially quarantining ourselves in our little cubby holes, in front of our monitors, surfing rather than socializing. We’re locked out of harm’s way far more than we once were, which could partially explain why this ain’t anywhere close to your granddaddy’s flu. You need to be around people to catch a deadly disease from them. So we might see this as an unintended advantage of our seclusion. Our computers are catching more viruses than we are.

A reason to celebrate? Perhaps. But don’t expect the TV newshounds to be throwing any parties. Their eyebrows are far too busy twitching.