Fear spreads faster than swine flu
Yesterday I read Bob Hoffman’s amusing post about “death fatigue,” and it got me thinking about how much of the fear and fanaticism surrounding swine flu can be attributed to the name. It sounds awful. Much more unpleasant than bird flu, for example.
Then, on my 30-minute commute (plus or minus) into the office today, I heard 30 minutes (plus or minus) of NPR swine flu stories, and nothing else. I now know the status of swine flu preparedness for just about every country on Earth. A couple of the stories, both of which I found pretty amusing, were about groups that are upset about the name and the alternative names they’ve proposed.
- The pork industry is upset that it will put people off of pork products, even though the virus can’t be transmitted through food. Proposed alternative names: novel flu, North American influenza. I guess they weren’t too upset about Mad Cow Disease, however.
- Israeli Jews are upset because pork isn’t Kosher, which I guess makes it sound even worse to Kosher Jews than it does to everyone else. Proposed alternative name: Mexican flu. Obviously, this preposterous suggestion has upset Mexicans (specifically, the Mexico ambassador in Israel).
Muslim law prohibits pork as well, and another NPR story suggests that Muslim groups are upset as well. All of this has the ever-diplomatic Obama White House to referring to the virus as H1N1, its technical handle. All of this strikes me as an interesting case study in the general power of names, and, although NPR reported a few hours ago that they’re “seeing a transition to the scientific name [H1N1],” how difficult they can be to change once they’ve reached critical mass.
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…and an interesting correlation to your cogent point is how aggressively Glaxo and a couple other pharma groups are marketing and selling new flu ‘anitdotes’ and vaccines on the back of this generated fear and confusion.
Never underestimate the power of words to subtly drive or coax fear. Subtly driving emotional reaction sells faster and better than critical language skills and reason, which take more time. And: we’re animals, hardwired with certain codes. If marketers (and we’re all marketers in a ‘market economy’ ) can bypass the frontal lobes and go direct to the amygdala, bingo.
While Joe Biden was roundly criticized by airline and travel CEOs for his ‘offhand’ comments on The Today Show about flying and the flu, the pharma groups and mask-manufacturing surely were heralding their Pied Piper of Pandemic Panic.
An interesting adjunct: autism, especially in males, is related to reduced, restricted and more reactive fear centers in the brain. It becomes a physical trait due to a co-incidence of of reduced language skills, environment, heredity and behaviors.
http://www.physorg.com/news85252324.html