Why Plan Ahead When You Can Panic Now?
Some of us in the medical field (especially transcriptionists, I think) are in a unique position to observe certain trends in society. If you work a clinic account, your work has definite seasons, even if you don't: Fall brings school physicals and general checkups, winter brings winter sports injuries and colds. At the end of the year, you see a lot of seniors getting in one last checkup before their Medicare rolls over. In the spring, you get summer camp physicals and summer brings everything from skateboard fractures and soccer injuries to sunburns and Lyme disease. There's a kind of reassurance through it all that the world is operating on schedule.
We are also privy to the first waves of fad or panic. Even before I was an MT, I saw this in the natural foods shop--some lame article in the paper or segment on a morning infotainment show, and we'd be overrun by people desperate to stock up on lecithin granules, red rice yeast, melatonin, oat bran, flax seed, or whatever the latest "discovery" was. Now, I see the same thing, only it's more apt to involve the marketing of disease (cholesterol, mood disorders, hair loss, erectile dysfunction), and not such a benign thing. It seems that the public in general is a very easy sell and likes to let someone do the thinking and research for them. I think there are many doctors who like to see a more informed patient but I suspect more often, they are merely annoyed because there are so many who come in armed with snippets of truth, demanding the latest quick fix.
The latest swine flu outbreak is another facet of all this. Like a well-written eBay auction (I often find myself wondering who bought the hippie bus and whether they hit it off with the little brother who went with it), there are stories that go viral almost overnight. The news flashes images of people wearing dust masks in Mexico and suddenly, there is outright panic. Instead of researching information on how to avoid germs, how not to spread them yourself, and whether there really is a threat to us personally, people simply start to panic. A sudden influx into the ERs meant I was called upon to help out a bit, and I was amazed--and more than a little sympathetic for the docs there. Everyone and his uncle was coming in with a snot nose or a cough (It was there last week, I swear!) and demanding a Rhino-Probe to see if they had swine flu.
Perhaps it's a testament to our present culture that in less than a week, hardly anyone was coming in for this, though the local news still seems determined to maintain the fear. Has our collective attention span become so short that we can only stay interested in a topic for a week or so? It seems like swine flu was THE news and everyone was trying to hitch their wagon to it (i.e. the extremists who insisted we stop immigration NOW, never mind the virus came here courtesy of school kids from Queens) and now. . . it's slipping into the background as it barely ranks a single entry near the bottom of the page when you google today's top news stories. Clearly, Supreme Court speculation, Madonna's preoccupation with adoption, and the upcoming Star Trek prequel are more important in the grand scheme of things. (I mean some of this in a not-so-snarky way, as clearly, Star Trek does rank way up there.)
I don't know why it bothers me, but I wish just once, people would take the opportunity to educate themselves so they were better prepared for the next fad or panic. Perhaps this should be a time to reassess your diet, as this particular virus is acknowledged to have come from a Smithfield meat factory (check out the Rolling Stone exposé here for a little background info). It isn't only pigs, either--it's virtually everything farmed on a monster scale. Is it any wonder organic and locally grown foods are becoming exponentially more popular? I suspect more of us are realizing that the best offense is a good defense--that's what "survival of the fittest" involves, after all. Take good care of yourself and be healthy, eat well, keep your hands washed and away from your face, and research the antivirals that occur naturally (Tamiflu? made from star anise--only herbal remedies don't benefit stockholders like Rumsfeld, in this case, so no one's going to market them). Most of all, don't go running to the emergency room at the first sign of a sniffle--hospitals are full of sick people, after all! At least call your primary care first for reassurance.
FYI, here's a great timeline of pandemics in recorded history. Obviously, influenza is the key player here, but again, being healthy has always been the best defense. Well, that and working from the isolation of your own home, as so many MTs do. . . Real threat or imagined, this actually is one of those perks of the job, getting a front-row seat without actually having to be in the trenches.