E. Coli!! *SCREAM*FAINT*

Friday, Sept. 22, 2006 @ 5:02 p.m.

Gawd, some people are so friggin' DUMB sometimes when it comes to public health issues (among other things)!!

Seems that there's always some ailment/vector/virus/bad-health-culprit of the moment. In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, anthrax was the disease du jour. It was everything people could talk about. After the hoaxes, if anyone so much as sneezed, people suspected anthrax. It was as if all diseases on Earth ceased to exist for a month or so while the spotlight was on anthrax. Anthrax, anthrax, anthrax. How many people actually died as a direct consequence of it? One - a postal worker. But OOOOH, big scary anthrax!! Now, nobody really cares about it anymore, despite the fact that anthrax is still pretty much around as much as it was back then. But the 'fad' is over, so nobody cares about it anymore.

Now, it's E. Coli. Ooooh, can't have spinach, or else I'll get infected with this nasty bacterium and drop dead and die. People, there are plenty of more dangerous vectors out there!! Please educate yourself a little before you start letting loose all the fear! I'm not discounting the fact that it's potentially dangerous (it is), but the reaction of the people just seems so off-the-hook, you would have thought it was the Ebola!!! Today, a few people have fallen sick after drinking a brand of organic milk... and what's the first thing they suspect? E. COLI!!! It's that damn nasty new bacteria on the block that's in fashion these days!! Recall the milk, pronto!!!

No, I'm not doubting that it may very well be E. Coli in the milk that's making kids sick. I'm just wondering how it would have gone unnoticed (and dismissed as simple food poisoning) if the spinach fiasco hadn't come up. Now everytime people feel sick after eating something, it's gotta be E. Coli!!! Damn, the plain ignorance of some people really pisses me off!!!

A large portion of the blame definitely falls on the media. Presently, it's headline news every night. It's creating the premises on which people's fears are stirred, and they just go haywire from there on. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Sure, we can't expect the entire population to know how E. Coli infections progress, but for goodness' sake, EDUCATE the people while you report the facts!!! Don't just say "it's very dangerous, you could die", and leave it there! Hell, you could die if you crossed the street too, if a drunken driver came your way - but most people know the whole picture, and thus don't freak out about crossing streets!

I just wish the news would stop putting the excessive dramatism on news items that don't deserve that much hype. The war is still going on, plenty of people dying everyday still. So why does E. Coli take center stage over that? Because reporting about war is just not 'fashionable' anymore. People are losing interest, ratings are going down. So quick, focus on some other issue, blow it up as much as you can, SAVE THE RATINGS!!!

Now, you have a ton of people worried sick about E. Coli. Your ratings have gone up.

Is it worth it? Where's your sense of social responsibility?

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