The Drudge Pandemic

Drudge is an interesting character. He likes to stir things up. He throws things against the wall to see if they'll stick. They often do. Every newspaper editor and TV news producer has Drudge at the top of their favourites list. He drives news.

Last week, Drudge ran a massive headline about a possible flu outbreak in Mexico. Above The Drudge Report title, he ran another six smaller headlines, all of them warning of impending doom.

My antenna went up: Drudge is trying to drive a story. He's bored.

A day went by and nobody else was talking about it. I mean nobody: I surfed the websites of various blogs, papers, and TV news shows. Nobody had "swine flu" as a leading headline. But Drudge didn't quit. He put ten headlines above The Drudge Report title and he turned the main headline bright red, as he does when there's an "emergency" (the definition of "emergency" is very flexible in Drudge's world). Drudge rarely puts more than one or two headlines above the title, so he was out to prove that he was serious: this is a big story. Huge.

Another day went by and I started hearing about swine flu on the TV channels. Just a little bit. CNN got interested, and slowly the politicians got in on the act. Drudge ran a headline of LEVEL 5 and, sure enough, the TV news treated me to an explanation that LEVEL 5 is just shy of a real pandemic, which would be level 6. Bubble headed morning hosts suddenly got wise and used graphics to explain the difference between epidemic and pandemic (the first is bad, the second is apparently the end of the world).

Drudge hammered home the idea of closing the Mexican border. He ran headline after headline about Mexico's impending demise. That became a topic of conversation in the blogs straight away until finally, last night, a reporter asked the President of the United States if the border should be closed.

Last night I was watching a TV show out of Seattle and an anchorman broke in with a breathless update. You know the type: a red screen, booming music, and a high budget graphic: BREAKING NEWS, followed by a man wearing a tie but no jacket. He reported that two cases of swine flu had been confirmed - confirmed - in the state of Washington. He repeated it - confirmed - and then they went back to late night TV. So basically he broke in to tell me that someone had a cold.

So far, a smattering of people in Mexico have apparently died from swine flu. This number doesn't come close to the tens of thousands that die from plain old influenza every year, but hey, it's early days. Vaccines won't work, because influenza mutates all the time (this is why your flu shot is bogus; it's a waste of time and money). Wearing masks doesn't do much, though washing your hands does. If you can wash them 24 hours a day, you probably won't get sick. Or you might anyway. Such is life.

In The Great Influenza, a very good book by John Barry about the Spanish Flu, Barry points out that totally sealing yourself off from society or having a constantly running nose is probably the only way to dodge the flu. (By the way, about pig farmers and the Israeli government not liking the "swine" part of "swine flu," chill out. Spanish Flu didn't start in Spain - according to Barry it probably started in Kansas - but the name stuck, anyway. It's just a name. Last night's pork chops tasted great).

“It is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic." That's the director-general of the World Health Organization. And she's right, to a degree. But the real threat is from people that want to scare the hell out of you while making the manufacturers of Tamiflu rich.

An influenza pandemic can be devastating, but this flu doesn't look to be the one to do it. During the Spanish Flu outbreak, people were fine one minute and literally dropping dead the next. It was a very bad flu and it ended up killing tens of millions. By contrast, people with this flu are wearing surgical masks while talking to reporters about their Mexican vacation. Provided it doesn't mutate, this flu doesn't appear to be any worse that any other influenza that affects us year in, year out.

For me, the real pandemic to come out of this craze is the rumour mill of Drudge. He drove this story from the beginning. He was the first one to push it and he pushed it until people started to talk about it. He's the germ. Big media is the body. It took him three days to infect them. And there's not a doubt in my mind that he did it on purpose. He was sitting around and thought, "I am going to change the news for the next couple of weeks. For the hell of it. This flu thing in Mexico looks kind of interesting. Let's see..."

When I first saw his six headlines of doom I thought, what's he up to?

Not much. Just infecting people. And enjoying it. He does it all the time.

Photo: NY Times