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On Tuesday, the Toronto Star led off a front-page story, headlined “Flu pandemic ‘catastrophe’ for Canada,” with these words:
A bird flu pandemic could paralyze Canada’s manufacturing sector for more than a year and cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars in medical costs, the Conference Board of Canada says.
Sketching a worst-case scenario, the board warns that up to 1.6 million Canadians — and between 180 and 360 million people worldwide — could die if a global pandemic is triggered by the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
Yesterday, the Star began its walkback. A front-page story began, “Claims that an avian flu pandemic could kill up to 1.6 million Canadians are out of line, says Carolyn Bennett, the minister of state for public health.” Bennett wanted to temper fears of bird flu that have flared in the country “amid predictions of high death tolls and the possible decimation of the Canadian economy,” the paper reported. Later, the Star shot down the Conference Board’s huge estimate, which was pro-rated for Canada’s population “based on the predicted worldwide death toll of 180 million to 360 million.” “You can’t just divide by 10,” Bennett said.
The Star‘s do-over is reminiscent of a high-profile self-rebuttal by the World Health Organization (WHO). Several weeks ago, its point man on bird flu warned that up to 150 million could perish worldwide in a pandemic — which was quickly followed by a WHO statement that, well, actually, 2 million to 7.4 million would be more realistic. How do we get from 150 million one day to 2 million the following day? Clearly, numbers are being tossed about like confetti, but as an infectious disease specialist told the Los Angeles Times last week, “The problem with all the numbers is that nobody knows.” (Emphasis added.)
The Star‘s “reality check” story also points to something else: a tendency of the press to dwell fondly upon the worst-case scenarios regarding bird flu. The scenarios are an alluring form of journalistic candy, but they’re just that — worst-case scenarios, doomsday visions — and the Star is far from alone in lingering over them. In a story Sunday, a Knight Ridder piece focused on a bird flu apocalypse, reporting that the U.S. government is scrambling to prepare “for a possible global rampage by a new flu germ that it fears could kill nearly 2 million Americans, sicken tens of millions more and shatter the economy.” In a worst-case scenario, Knight Ridder said, the health system would collapse, schools, airports and harbors would close, public gatherings would end, and businesses and vital public services would be crippled — in short, “a nation-busting event.”
Followed, of course, by this: “To be sure, it may not happen.” (Emphasis ours.)
Yes, last week birds confirmed or suspected of carrying the dreaded H5N1 virus were found in countries including Turkey, Romania and Greece. And yes, in the rare cases when it has jumped from bird to person in Asia, the disease has killed about half of those infected. And yes, that has sparked widespread fears of a deadly pandemic, if unpredictable genetic mutations make the virus transmissible between humans.
But it’s important to remember that nearly all human cases thus far have come from close contact with infected birds (think poultry workers), and no one knows when (or if) the pandemic will arrive.
As the Washington Post aptly put it Tuesday, “Avian flu is an imminent threat to health and well-being. For birds. In Asia and Eastern Europe.”
Instead of spending precious space and resources on the worst that could possibly happen, distracted members of the press could be digging to tell the multifaceted global story of what is actually happening. The San Francisco Chronicle provided one such example yesterday, with a solid article explaining pharmaceutical giant Roche’s decision to license its antiviral drug Tamiflu, alleviating a manufacturing logjam and allowing desperate governments to add to their stockpiles.
The New York Times went further, relaying experts’ warnings that even as countries spend billions “to prepare for a possible avian flu pandemic, too little planning has gone into how to use the accumulating arsenal of medical weapons.” Tamiflu’s efficacy after widespread treatment is an unknown, the story reports, and no one yet knows how well “the most promising candidate vaccine under development” would work.
Frankly, that level of uncertainty in our defenses scares us more than the most wildly speculative death toll ever could — which is why, more than ever, the press needs to stay on task, pressuring governments and pharmaceutical companies to find solutions.
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