And swine might fly
Dean JohnsPublished: May 6, 2009 1:59 AM | Updated: May 6, 2009 2:06 AM
I must say I’m getting a bit sick of this latest pandemic the World Health Organisation is promoting.
Not as sick of it, I grant you, as Mexicans must be, having first been blamed for starting the thing, then advised by their government to quarantine themselves at home. Or as the airlines and other travel operators must be to be hit by a flu scare while they’re still struggling to survive the economic crash.
I must say I’m getting a bit sick of this latest pandemic the World Health Organisation is promoting.
Not as sick of it, I grant you, as Mexicans must be, having first been blamed for starting the thing, then advised by their government to quarantine themselves at home. Or as the airlines and other travel operators must be to be hit by a flu scare while they’re still struggling to survive the economic crash.
On a personal level, though, I’m totally over it. After two weeks of alarmism, still only 1,000 confirmed cases around the world and a decidedly measly mortality rate, I’m starting to suspect that we’ve been taken for another SARS-style ride.
As unmercifully as it has been hyped, this clearly isn’t the pandemic the doomsayers have been promising us since the so-called Spanish flu outbreak of 90 years ago. In fact it isn’t a pandemic at all but a pundemic.
Swine flu, for all panicky predictions of its mutant, cross-species malignancy and potentially catastrophic mortality, now appears to be no more infectious or deadly than the old, familiar whine flu.
And let’s face it, having to whine about fever, joint pains and nasal discharge for a few days is hardly a cause for alarm. Specially considering that it gets us off work and other chores for as long as we claim to be suffering.
But even the whine flu can be deadly, of course. In fact I’m told that it can lead to pneumonia and other pulmonary complications and may cause up to 500,000 deaths every year.
It’s a figure that certainly puts swine flu in its proper perspective, but pales almost to insignificance beside less-publicised and more preventable pandemics like malnutrition (6 million deaths per year), Aids (3 million), malaria (another 3 million), infant mortality (2.5 million)and diarrhoea (2 million).
And if these don’t get us, as they probably won’t, given that they’re diseases of the desperately poor and disadvantaged, then we face heart disease (17 million a year), cancer (7 million) and road accidents among others (5 million).
So the odds are pretty good, or bad, depending on your point of few, that you or I will succumb to any of the strains of the influenza virus I can recall scares about in my lifetime, from the so-called Asian flu of a few decades ago through the more recent avian or bird flu to the current swine and the perennial whine varieties.
Mock-reformist hogwash
Whatever the real danger may be from any current or impending pandemic, however, there are always people to whom it’s not so much a matter of life or death as of dollars and cents.
Or, as long as this column’s supposed to be about Malaysia, let’s make that ringgit and sen.
I must confess that, given the rapacity of the current and chronic Barisan Nasional government, the moment I heard of the swine flu threat my thoughts flew to who might profit from it.
Who, for example, controls the Malaysian importation, manufacture and sale of flu vaccines and treatments? And given that there aren’t enough doses of these agents to go around in any country that I’ve heard of, how will these scarce supplies be allocated in Malaysia, and who stands to make a killing out of selling them at a panic premium?
Not that I imagine there’s anyone in power prepared to reply to such potentially embarrassing questions, or any reporters in the mainstream press willing to probe for the truth of the matter.
Then there’s the whole question of quarantine and crowd control in Malaysia. Perhaps the repressive rules against public assembly can be justified on the grounds that they’re designed to protect the populace against swine flu and other infectious diseases rather than outbreaks of political dissent.
More specifically, the massive police presence illegally blocking public access to Ipoh’s Darul Ridwan Building for the controversial May 7 sitting of the Perak legislature can be explained as a cordon sanitaire against the swine flu virus, rather than a stand-off between the cops and protestors.
And the exclusion from the legislative assembly of all those undesirables from Malaysiakini, Malaysian Insider, Harakah and Suara Keadilan, the international press and the blogosphere could be seen as preventing the truth virus from infecting those media that can be trusted to tell the people porkies on BN’s behalf.
But now that the Perak usurper ‘Menteri Besar’ Zambry Abd Kadir has apparently reversed his ban on real journalists, they’ll be putting themselves in harm’s way. I personally wouldn’t want to risk rubbing shoulders with operatives from the likes of RTM, TV3, Bernama, Star, New Straits Times, Berita Harian and the rest of the BN stable - or sty - or risk breathing the same air as them, at least without a face-mask.
They’re not journalists, they’re germalists; devoted not to informing the populace, but infecting their unfortunate viewers and readers with the BN malaise.
Of course lots of them have been making much of all the mock-reformist hogwash that Najib Abdul Razak was mouthing-off about a few weeks ago about encouraging “respectable and fair dialogue on the country’s future involving the whole nation that takes place with a vibrant, free and informed media”.
On and on he went, proclaiming that “the country needed a media - both old and new - that is empowered to responsibly report what they saw, without fear of consequences, and to hold government and public officials accountable for the results they produced” and a “new national discourse” on the principles of transparency and accountability.
But to judge from Najib’s silence on World Press Freedom Day recently, and the powers, privileges and perks that the mainstream media have to jealously guard for themselves and their masters, BN is no more likely to permit true press freedom in Malaysia than we are to see swine fly.
Not as sick of it, I grant you, as Mexicans must be, having first been blamed for starting the thing, then advised by their government to quarantine themselves at home. Or as the airlines and other travel operators must be to be hit by a flu scare while they’re still struggling to survive the economic crash.
On a personal level, though, I’m totally over it. After two weeks of alarmism, still only 1,000 confirmed cases around the world and a decidedly measly mortality rate, I’m starting to suspect that we’ve been taken for another SARS-style ride.As unmercifully as it has been hyped, this clearly isn’t the pandemic the doomsayers have been promising us since the so-called Spanish flu outbreak of 90 years ago. In fact it isn’t a pandemic at all but a pundemic.
Swine flu, for all panicky predictions of its mutant, cross-species malignancy and potentially catastrophic mortality, now appears to be no more infectious or deadly than the old, familiar whine flu.
And let’s face it, having to whine about fever, joint pains and nasal discharge for a few days is hardly a cause for alarm. Specially considering that it gets us off work and other chores for as long as we claim to be suffering.
But even the whine flu can be deadly, of course. In fact I’m told that it can lead to pneumonia and other pulmonary complications and may cause up to 500,000 deaths every year.
It’s a figure that certainly puts swine flu in its proper perspective, but pales almost to insignificance beside less-publicised and more preventable pandemics like malnutrition (6 million deaths per year), Aids (3 million), malaria (another 3 million), infant mortality (2.5 million)and diarrhoea (2 million).And if these don’t get us, as they probably won’t, given that they’re diseases of the desperately poor and disadvantaged, then we face heart disease (17 million a year), cancer (7 million) and road accidents among others (5 million).
So the odds are pretty good, or bad, depending on your point of few, that you or I will succumb to any of the strains of the influenza virus I can recall scares about in my lifetime, from the so-called Asian flu of a few decades ago through the more recent avian or bird flu to the current swine and the perennial whine varieties.
Mock-reformist hogwash
Whatever the real danger may be from any current or impending pandemic, however, there are always people to whom it’s not so much a matter of life or death as of dollars and cents.
Or, as long as this column’s supposed to be about Malaysia, let’s make that ringgit and sen.
I must confess that, given the rapacity of the current and chronic Barisan Nasional government, the moment I heard of the swine flu threat my thoughts flew to who might profit from it.
Who, for example, controls the Malaysian importation, manufacture and sale of flu vaccines and treatments? And given that there aren’t enough doses of these agents to go around in any country that I’ve heard of, how will these scarce supplies be allocated in Malaysia, and who stands to make a killing out of selling them at a panic premium?Not that I imagine there’s anyone in power prepared to reply to such potentially embarrassing questions, or any reporters in the mainstream press willing to probe for the truth of the matter.
Then there’s the whole question of quarantine and crowd control in Malaysia. Perhaps the repressive rules against public assembly can be justified on the grounds that they’re designed to protect the populace against swine flu and other infectious diseases rather than outbreaks of political dissent.
More specifically, the massive police presence illegally blocking public access to Ipoh’s Darul Ridwan Building for the controversial May 7 sitting of the Perak legislature can be explained as a cordon sanitaire against the swine flu virus, rather than a stand-off between the cops and protestors.And the exclusion from the legislative assembly of all those undesirables from Malaysiakini, Malaysian Insider, Harakah and Suara Keadilan, the international press and the blogosphere could be seen as preventing the truth virus from infecting those media that can be trusted to tell the people porkies on BN’s behalf.
But now that the Perak usurper ‘Menteri Besar’ Zambry Abd Kadir has apparently reversed his ban on real journalists, they’ll be putting themselves in harm’s way. I personally wouldn’t want to risk rubbing shoulders with operatives from the likes of RTM, TV3, Bernama, Star, New Straits Times, Berita Harian and the rest of the BN stable - or sty - or risk breathing the same air as them, at least without a face-mask.
They’re not journalists, they’re germalists; devoted not to informing the populace, but infecting their unfortunate viewers and readers with the BN malaise.
Of course lots of them have been making much of all the mock-reformist hogwash that Najib Abdul Razak was mouthing-off about a few weeks ago about encouraging “respectable and fair dialogue on the country’s future involving the whole nation that takes place with a vibrant, free and informed media”.On and on he went, proclaiming that “the country needed a media - both old and new - that is empowered to responsibly report what they saw, without fear of consequences, and to hold government and public officials accountable for the results they produced” and a “new national discourse” on the principles of transparency and accountability.
But to judge from Najib’s silence on World Press Freedom Day recently, and the powers, privileges and perks that the mainstream media have to jealously guard for themselves and their masters, BN is no more likely to permit true press freedom in Malaysia than we are to see swine fly.
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