Voice of reason or crowd panic? (Swine flu thoughts)

Undoubtedly, you have heard of the Swine Flu. Unfortunately, you have heard of it a little too often. Ad nauseam, I would say, but then you'd ask if this was a symptom. It seems that fear campaigns bring media the most popularity, and this meant they could not pass up such a golden opportunity. From every direction we are flooded with fear-breaking headlines like the following:
I do not want to throw statistics at you, neither do I wish to link to hundreds of jargon-heavy empirical research articles to prove my point. What I do want you to do, however, is to use your own common sense. Analyze information provided to you not only by the immediate presentation, but by integrating your past knowledge, your life experience as well as by simply looking up important things that seem to be missing. Read, understand, take a step back. Look at the big picture. Think. Do what Socrates did. Here is a sample of questions you might want answered before you barricade yourself in your custom made bunker with 30 years' worth of food and water.
  • How many people got sick? survived? died? from this H1N1 swine flu.
  • How infectious is it? 
  • How does the swine flu compare to other things that are not reported in this article, e.g. influenza in terms of virulence?

Just to finish on a rather entertaining, yet certainly not serious, idea (except if you are from Mexico):

Symptoms

Found on http://snooz3r.tumblr.com/post/101960469/symptoms

How and why I got into medical school

To paraphrase the famous expression "You don't know what you got, until it's gone" more appropriately for this post - "You don't know what you'll have until it's yours".

While I was still in the premed camp, I used to dream about the time these life-changing words would be addressed to me - "Congratulations, you have been selected..." and dreading yet another "Dear candidate, despite your excellent dossier, you were not selected..." (I have received more than a couple of those). For years, I used to speak in the conditional "If I become I doctor...". It sort of became a reflex, a second nature of mine. And during those years I thought of the moment of getting my acceptance as a sharp 90 degree turn you sometimes encounter on the country side or Canadian urban centres. When you see it ahead, you have to slow down and make sure you stay in your lane. In the same way I thought I would change my life trajectory when the new and better stretch of my life appeared in front of me. Many exciting events in mind were tied to Being Accepted. "I will do this... I will try that...". But all ended with "if only I was accepted" - although I was never superstitious, the grandeur of the subject made me almost religious when discussing it. Which, by the way, shows just how feeble the whole thing was. As the list of things to do or to try grew, so did the weight and the importance of the aftermath. It became harder and harder for me to bear the possibility of rejection, with so much value attached to this one event, not even entirely under my control. Also, as I put on hold many if not all of the things I really wanted to do, I became less and less happy. But I did not notice this, I was too preoccupied with my thoughts.

This was then.