highwaystar101 said:
You should check into that cough to make sure you don't have swine flu. I know this is off topic, but H1N1 was a serious issue. I'm usually the first person to spot out when the media is overblowing something, and I'm certainly not as influenced by the media as most. But I also like to think I can judge when something is overblown in the media, and swine flu was a serious case which warranted the media attention. It wasn't a standard strain of flu, humans had no natural immunity to it, and so it could have spread like wildfire. A person with regular flu will infect one, maybe two, people. But when humans don't have a natural immunity it infects many of the people the infected person comes into contact with. That's why such a big deal was made about prevention. That's why schools closed down and businesses were strict on not letting flu ridden employees come to work, to limit the spread of infection. In a way, the media hype itself was one of the things that limited its spreading potential, because it made people aware of its existence and that it was dangerous. I would have been sceptical myself, but I lived with three nurses at the time and they urged me to read up on it when we were talking about it one night, and what I found was that it really wasn't just regular flu, we had to act on it. Here's thunderf00t explaining more, you really should watch this.
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H1N1 was always a joke, and way overblown by the media. When you compared the projected number of infections and death tolls of the worst case scenario, H1N1 was only ever projected to be a moderately worse strain of the influenza virus than what we were used to.
Why it was so universally over-blown is simple, the news media thrives on making people afraid and never putting information into perspective. Much like how a kidnapping 300km away will (often) be used to instil fear in parents to ensure that they watch the evening news "to learn how to protect their children against these dangers", the H1N1 virus was used simply to boost ratings.
