Last week the Washington Times questioned the scare stories about the coming Avian Flu epidemic. Today's WaPo has review of two books about Avian Flu. One of them warns that "the wolf is coming" the other says that it isn't.
In reviewing THE MONSTER AT OUR DOOR:The Global Threat of Avian Flu By Mike Davis Merrill Goozner writes:
Mike Davis, an author better known for his dissection of the diseases of Southern California urbanism, spent a year immersed in the science of Southeast Asia's avian flu outbreak and came away convinced that "a flu pandemic is not a fate we can avoid." In "The Monster at Our Door," he argues that it is only a matter of time before the H5N1 flu virus or some other deadly variant hatched in the sprawling city-slums of Asia mutates into a grim reaper capable of culling the human herd by tens of millions.
Goozner also reviews FALSE ALARM: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear By Marc Siegel:
To which Marc Siegel, a practicing physician on the faculty of New York University School of Medicine, would reply, "You're wasting our money." In "False Alarm," Siegel weaves his personal experiences with patients who want to hoard drugs for use against various health scares into a story line that essentially accuses public health officials of acting like Chicken Little. He repeatedly castigates Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for "public displays of worrying [that] always made us worry more."He also heaps scorn on the media, which gladly race from one disease "outbreak" to another in search of readers and ratings without evaluating the actual risk faced by individuals or society. In 2002, for instance, the nation was gripped by media-driven fear of West Nile virus, which took fewer than three dozen lives. The next year, the disease killed four times as many people with scarcely a mention in the nation's press or, for that matter, pronouncements from leading public health officials. What changed? The focus had shifted to SARS, even though that disease never killed a single American.
Siegel sees bird flu as being no different from previous alarms. While a pandemic is always possible, he admits, the chances are remote, and public health authorities should work to dampen concern while monitoring the threat. "An epidemiological need to track an emerging disease before it gets out of hand," he writes, "is not the same thing as saying the entire public is already at risk."
Journalists and politicians have a vested interest in creating fear. Just like the little boy in Aesop's fable, they get attention by warning that the wolf is coming. In the fable, the village lost interest and the boy's cries were unheeded when the wolf did come.
The public gets weary of wolf warnings. More believable forecasts are needed. The public would do well to remember Fiedler's second law of forecasting: "He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass."
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