Histeria (A Look Back)

Today I am taking a moment to look back at some of the most recent, shall we call them public panic attacks or widespread mass hysteria that we have witnessed and see what we can learn from these instances and the rare form we find ourselves in- forget logical thinking, we believe just about anything we hear on the radio or in the news.

It was a year ago that the term "H1N1" entered the American vocabulary. It began in April 2009, when two children in California were infected with 'swine flu,' which later became known as H1N1. By the end of the month, officials were convinced they had a global emergency on their hands. On April 27, 2009, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan announced the global flu pandemic alert level was raised from 4 to 5. People flooded the hospitals, schools shut down, in Mexico the government banned public gatherings and in China travelers from affected regions were quarantined. Yet catastrophe never came, and the total U.S. death toll from H1N1 was about 13,000 people over the entire year, a number considerably smaller than the 36,000 people that die each year from the regular, seasonal flu. Millions of doses of H1N1 vaccine expired unused on doctors' shelves, and health officials are now under fire for over-hyping what seemed like just another form of the flu. So, was H1N1 much ado about nothing? In hindsight, the 2009-10 pandemic looks relatively mild, certainly much milder than the initial media panic might have led us to expect. Let's face it, leaving interpretation of the data to the media, whose coverage tends to swing between extremes, is not a good idea. In an age of Twitter and Smart phones, communication has never been this quick, and exaggerations can go a long, long way!

Remember Y2K? How could we not, it was everywhere. Some now refer to it as the "hoax of the century". So was the hype necessary? When the century ended and dates rolled over from 1999 to 2000 many computer programmers believed computers were not setup to make the change and would therefore result in widespread crashes. Some warnings of what would happen if nothing were done were extreme:

The Y2K problem is the electronic equivalent of the El Niño

and there will be nasty surprises around the globe. 

 -John Hamre, United States Deputy Secretary of Defense

Special committees were set up by governments to monitor remedial work and to perform contingency planning. On January 1, 2000, only minor problems were reported. Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, has since claimed that despite sending out hundreds of press releases about research results suggesting that the bug was not likely to be as big a problem as some had suggested, he was ignored by the media. Do I think the media uses the publics' fear to feed its own publicity, absolutely! With that being said, even though our country spent billions on preparing for Y2K and effectively nothing large went wrong, wasn't it still the right thing to do? Sort of like buying insurance for your home and car.

Let's not forget about SARS. A teenager's Web hoax claiming Hong Kong's borders would be closed prompted runs on canned foods and toilet paper. A supermarket owner in Sacramento spent two weeks arguing that, contrary to rumors, neither he nor his family were infected with SARS and that his stores were entirely safe. A Sacramento city councilman even tried to calm panic by eating a Granny Smith apple from the produce section of a store in front of reporters.

How about claims that anthrax was in your mail?
 

And more recently... I'm beginning to feel sorry for Toyota. And it could be that the media firestorm is causing owners to freak out unnecessarily. In the last 10 weeks alone, the US Safety Administration has received 272 complaints about speed control problems and over 1,800 about brakes. In 2009 there were just a handful of complaints.

 

They say that bad publicity is better than no publicity, but I'm not so sure. The media and politicians are keeping the coals hot under this fire, and your guess is as good as mine as to what their motives are. I don't doubt there is an underlying agenda, wouldn't put it past them.
 

Finally, just to prove a point that we often fall way to easily for some pretty out there fabrications from the media, have you heard about the 10-foot aliens in the Jordanian desert. The Al Ghad newspaper reported on April 1st that flying saucers were flown by 10ft creatures, landing in the desert town of Jafr in eastern Jordan. Communication networks went down and frightened townspeople fled into the streets. The mayor, Mohammed Mleihan, said parents were so frightened they did not send their children to school that day and he almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents. Mr. Mleihan told the Associated Press, "People were scared that aliens would attack them."  He immediately notified the police, who searched the area looking for the aliens. They did not find any.

 

 

APRIL FOOLS! Moussa Barhoumeh, Al Ghad's managing editor, said the newspaper was simply having some good natured fun on April Fools' Day, and apologised for any inconvenience caused. Mayor Mohammad Mleihan now says he may sue the newspaper for its "big lie."

Don't get me wrong, we should most definitely react to serious situations with a necessary and quick response, but being able to distinguish media hype from a true emergency situation is something most of us are not all that good at. Can you imagine what would have happened if the Houston Chronicle has published this same story? I hate to say it, but we probably would not have reacted much differently. Wake up people!