A Tale Of Two Pandemics

Article comparing the media's response to Coronavirus with their response to the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. Issues & Insights, March 2020.
Keywords: debate, issues, politics, media, coronavirus, swine flu, pandemic, outbreak, panic, article, issues and insights, march 2020

	Submitted by DarkSarcasm over a year ago

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DarkSarcasm said:

Although everyone seems to have forgotten the swine flu was even a thing, it infected nearly 61 million people in the U.S. from spring 2009 through early 2010. And it claimed as many as 18,000 lives, according to a Centers for Disease Control study published in 2011. In total, the disease is now believed to have caused more than 200,000 deaths worldwide.

(As of this writing, confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. are a little over 1,700, with 40 deaths attributed to the virus. Worldwide, confirmed cases number fewer than 130,000 and just over 4,700 people have died.)

The swine flu was a serious enough outbreak for President Barack Obama to declare a public health emergency in late April 2009. The WHO declared it a pandemic in early July – at which time 18,000 Americans had contracted the novel flu virus and 44 had died. And unlike coronavirus, the swine flu was more deadly to younger people. Obama declared a national emergency when the virus reemerged with a vengeance in the fall.

Yet the press barely covered any of these events.

posted over a year ago.

last edited over a year ago

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