Hey, Lester, It’s not just children who are dying from the flu!
Okay, I admit it. I watch NBC News. My girlfriend and I watch it during dinner. I complain (too much) that it’s just a hint of the news with no depth and no real analysis but hey, at least we get a story about the British royals at the end. Probably an unfair assessment, but not by much. However tonight I was really taken aback at what I heard — and what I didn’t see — in the story about the horrific flu outbreak that has hit most of the country.
The latest flu segment began with the image above. Lester Holt is coming to us from the South Korean Olympics with a scary montage at his right. Please note that there is an adult shown at the far right of that montage. That fact will be important later.
Then we are told to be afraid, very afraid, and rightly so, because as you can see in the image just below
this is a very dangerous time to be a kid. I actually gasped when this stat came up. (I also wondered why NBC had to put the same fact — 63 children dead — TWICE in the same shot. Was it a mistake by a graphics person or was it intentional to pound in that frightening number?) The rest of the story concentrated solely on children and how many had been affected nationwide. Supporting evidence came with videos like the one below: a doctor with a child and that same frightening number superimposed.
Parents with a child in intensive care were interviewed. A photo of a teenager tragically struck down in southern California was shown.
I mean, how can anyone not be affected by hearing about the danger that faces all our children? We were told to teach our children, if they had to sneeze, to push out the collar of their shirt and sneeze down into it to prevent the spread of flu germs. Parents were advised to kiss their children only on the top of the head, not on the face, as a preventative.
To further emphasize the severity of the flu epidemic, Dr. Anne Schuchat from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention told us the following:
“The last severe [flu] season that we had, 56,000 Americans died from influenza. We may be on track to reach or even exceed that level.” (Emphasis mine.)
WTF!! 56,000! That’s WAY bigger than 63. In fact, it’s 55,937 people more. Now even allowing for more children dying, this statement tells me that the vast majority of flu victims will be adults. As in people like you and me! Isn’t the death of a father or mother, a brother, a sister, an important fact to emphasize? With actual numbers? Nowhere in this clip was any image of the number 56,000 shown. I only learned that from the doctor’s mouth.
I was incredulous! I was sure she had misspoken. 56 hundred maybe, but 56,000?I had seen at least 15 different reports about the flu and this was the first time that I’d realized that flu death totals could supercede all the deaths from car accidents, or could be greater than all murders and suicides combined! But after researching the topic, I found that in any flu season — and the seasons’ length and severity are completely impossible to predict — anywhere from 12,000 to 56,000 people will die in the United States. But even those figures are hard to verify because most people don’t die from the flu itself; the flu causes those with compromised immune systems or problems with their hearts or lungs, for example, to die, but in those cases, it’s iffy as to whether the flu will be named as the proximate cause of those people’s deaths.
What I basically discovered was this: it’s a total guessing game for the CDC when it comes to the flu.
Now I really AM worried. The fatalities of all those children were bad enough. But I really had no idea of the overwhelming danger that lies all around every one of us for the next few months. Suffice it to say I’ll take even more precautions.
But I really would appreciate it if NBC would let us know that the danger from flu extends to those beyond childhood (or the elderly, which I do remember them mentioning). Why put an adult in that image at the beginning of this article if you’re going to show us nothing but children? A additional stern warning to the adults of the show would be appropriate, wouldn’t you think?
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About the author: Daniel Berenson contributes to Medium now and then — in this case now — with original and unique views on such things as squirrels, politics, fairy tales, hurricanes, sports, and Spanish telenovelas. Please follow him or give him some claps — please be sure that’s in the plural — if you enjoyed this. Or better yet, follow him. And thanks for reading this.
