Pandemic or media pandemonium?

We have a new type of cold in town, that’s all.”  These aren’t the words of an ignorant layman. The person describing swine flu as “a mild disease” is Jayaprakash Muliyil, professor and head of the department of community health, Christian Medical College, Vellore. And as anyone in the medical world will tell you, Christian Medical College is one of the best institutions of its type in India and Muliyil is one of India’s leading epidemiologists.

So what is the fuss all about? With the H1N1 virus floating all around the media, it is impossible not to be affected. Very few, luckily, will get swine flu but everyone will get a terrible attack of panic. Who is to blame?

Switch to the news on any TV channel and you think that all that is happening in the country is swine flu, swine flu and more swine flu. There are pictures of bodies being taken away, weeping families in masks, scores of agitated people standing in line to
be tested, doctors pleading with folded hands for restraint… The same kind of visuals have been on the front pages of our newspapers too, where stories of swine flu have driven away every other report to the inside pages for almost two weeks.

Yet look at the statistics. As of August 12, all across India the total number of confirmed cases is 1193. The death toll from these is 17, which works out to just 1.4 per cent. Here’s another revealing figure: according to the World Health Organisation, the number of deaths worldwide since the outbreak of swine flu is 1462. That’s it. Under 1500 deaths in months of the outbreak across many countries.

How many people died of traffic accidents in that time? How many from the usual
flu? How many died due to malaria, pneumonia, TB, cancer, heart failure? Far far more. But the world isn’t going into a frenzy because of those deaths, is it?  In fact, doctors say that malaria is a far bigger threat than H1N1 but it’s been around so long no one’s paying it any attention.

As it happens, the 31-year-old man who died in Mumbai, reportedly from swine flu, had tested negative for the disease. What he died of was malaria,  complicated by pneumonia. Yet as far as I know, no one has reported this. How did I find out? I spoke to his doctor.

What we are dealing with is a pandemic alright. H1N1 is highly infectious and it’s likely that a lot of us will catch this new kind of flu but — and this is the important point — a large majority of us will suffer only mild symptoms.

If the current figures are representative, as many as 98 per cent of people who get swine flu will only have the usual flu symptoms like fever, body ache, and so on. So why are we in such a state of panic?

Is it any surprise that doctors, particularly, epidemiologists, have been stressing that shutting down schools, malls and cinemas is an over-reaction likely to aggravate the
frenzied rumours about swine flu.

On the other hand, did the government have any choice given the current mood everywhere? People like their governments to act, even if the action has no intrinsic value and is action purely for action’s sake.

Why was the government forced into this corner? Would I be overstating the case that this was because of the frenzied reporting of the media, both electronic and print? An epidemic is a compelling story and brings with it dramatic pictures and heart-rending human interest stories, yet somewhere a sense of perspective was lost and the media failed in its primary duty of reporting the facts in the correct context.

The context and perspective are just beginning to come out now. But the damage, sadly, has already been done.