In reporting on the recent swine flu panic that has swept the globe, The Australian
ran a story over the weekend about “sorting panic from pandemic,” citing how “some health experts say that although the latest developments are cause for concern, the extent of the threat has arguably been exaggerated even by other experts and some organisations.”
Luckily, they call in a sociologist…
Sociologist Claire Hooker, co-ordinator of the medical humanities program at the University of Sydney, agrees with Collignon that officials here and overseas did go a bit overboard, at least initially.
“At the beginning I was concerned about some comments that seemed to be unwarranted by events as they then sat … (such as) a call that people may want to get prepared by making face masks,” Hooker says.
She was worried this might alarm the public, although there was scant evidence this happened. “Although there was a run on Tamiflu at the time, which would be a problem if you really had the flu and wanted to get some,” she says.
“Early on there was an attitude that you have to scare people enough to get them to wash their hands properly, but not so much that they turn up in droves to be tested.
“In my view that’s a silly way to look at it: there’s no way you can make people what you imagine to be the right amount of frightened. What’s more important is to treat the general public with respect, and expect them to be able to understand the complexity and the uncertainty.”
Hooker thinks the degree of hype applied to swine flu was modest, and evident only early into the outbreak. Official pronouncements more recently have been measured, she believes. But that doesn’t apply to some measures given the big news treatment, such as thermal image scanners, used to detect feverish passengers disembarking from an airliner.
“I know that thermal scanners were used to scan about 180 million people during SARS, and they detected maybe three cases,” she says. “But they look good on TV.”
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