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Don’t you just love the way the news media plays upon our emotions and fears? I almost get the impression that when they don’t have something apocalyptic to report they find the next best thing and ratchet up the fear factor to add a little extra angst to an already angst ridden world.
Here we are about to embark upon Memorial Day weekend and our government, because of the recent bombings in the Middle East and some covertly obtained information from suspected terrorists, have raised the Homeland Security Advisory System level, or as some news stations call it Terror Alert, to high. The second that stupid scare barometer changes color the news media is all over it. It becomes the number one story on every newscast and the news media does it in the name of safety.
First of all, we don’t need that system. Terrorism is something that can’t be measured by degrees or colors. It has become a part of the world we live in. We shouldn’t have to be warned about its presence like a weather report. It should be something that we are aware of daily, as it is not going away any time in our lifetime. That doesn’t mean we need to be dwelling on it every second of every day, we just need to be aware of its existence.
But orange is the color of the week and the lead story on the news. Which also makes you think what happened to last week’s big story? What was it anyway? Oh that’s right. In the weeks since the war ended we have been treated to the never ending reporting of the potential new plague, SARS.
SARS, in case you have forgotten in the last week, is Severe Acute Respiratory System. This disease was responsible for numerous deaths in China and 662 deaths worldwide. As soon as it started spreading around the world we were all put on alert. We started looking with fear at anyone near us who coughed more than once. This week we haven’t heard a peep about it. Gee, maybe they cured it last week and didn’t bother to mention it to us.
But boy, when we started hearing about it everybody was so paranoid that the news media were dubbing it the new AIDS. People started canceling trips to all Asian countries that had reported cases of the disease. To top it off, every picture of people we saw coming out of China looked like multiple Michael Jacksons on a shopping spree. I’m sure the manufacturers of surgical masks were ecstatic.
As the number of countries with reported cases increased, the media fanned the flames with reports of the number of deaths leading the news report parade. Soon UC Berkley cancelled its student exchange program with China and other schools soon followed. The airline and tourism industries, already on the ropes from the beating it took due to the Iraqi war, took yet another pummeling.
On the upside though, the fear of the disease spreading to the United States caused the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, to do what the INS was incapable or unwilling to do, tighten security around our borders. It also helped crush the number of students fraudulently applying for student visas under the auspices of things like dog grooming. When I heard that one I had to laugh. When I hear the words China and dogs in the same sentence the word grooming is never included.
That little move seems to have worked. Out of the 29 countries with reported cases of SARS the United States has had only 67 and hasn’t had any deaths attributed to the disease. Our neighbors to the north, Canada, weren’t as lucky because they didn’t do what we did. The result is that their tourism has taken such a hit that they are going to hire an advertising agency to come up with an ad campaign to woo people back. That’s going to cost them approximately $110 million.
What is the most frustrating part of this type of hysterical reporting is that after they pump everyone up with fear, they don’t follow through and give any sort of resolution. All they do is let the story slowly drop down from the top story to the bottom until it just fades away. It doesn’t mean that the problem has been resolved, it just means that they couldn’t come up with a sensational way to put a cap on it.
Since they won’t do it, I will, and here’s how it breaks down. As far as terrorism goes it’s not going away anytime soon. The only thing we can hope to do is be ever vigilante. There is always going to be some lunatic fringe group out there who is jealous of or hates the United States. So move the Terror Alert to severe and lose it. You’re terrorizing us every time you use it.
As far as SARS goes, it’s not going anywhere either. Just because the news media has given up on it, that doesn’t mean it’s gone. Quite the contrary. In a report that came out Wednesday from the CDC, it stated the following: the nature of this disease is not unlike the flu, the measles, and other infectious illnesses that, like SARS, are brought about by infectious diseases. These diseases follow a cyclical pattern, waning in the warmer months and increase when the weather gets colder and dryer.
Based on the CDC report, if we keep the travel between Asia and the US to a minimum, we should be able to keep an epidemic from erupting during the fall and winter next year. The disease is showing no sign of slowing down in Asia, and in fact it is still flourishing due to poor sanitation and substandard health care. On Wednesday, 12 more deaths and 39 more reported cases surfaced in Taiwan. Again, according to the CDC, it will continue to increase for years to come due to the fact that the disease has found a hospitable host in these Asian countries.
So let’s keep a tight rein on those boarders and stop passing out visas like they are free food samples at Sam’s Club and maybe, just maybe, we can stay healthy and keep a majority of the terrorists out at the same time.
Who knows, it may even help cut back on the welfare checks that go out and the illegal aliens that keep coming in. The Shrub Speaks: These despicable [suicide attacks] were committed by killers whose only faith is hate. And the United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice. CNN, May 13, 2003
BD’s response: Gee Dubya, how does one go about prosecuting dead assassins?
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