Cause for Panic?

Here's a thought-provoking commentary from Salon.com: "Pandemic Pandemonium" by Mary Beth Crain:

May 2, 2009 | "Revelation," notes the historian Barbara Tuchman in her epic book "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," "was the favorite guide to human affairs in the Middle Ages."

And the terrible predictions of Revelation seemed to have come to pass when, in 1347, a sinister, horrific malady began sweeping through Europe, cutting down nearly everyone in its ruthless path. In fact, the image of the Grim Reaper, a skeletal Death with a scythe, entered our iconography as a result of the most dreaded disease the world had ever known: the Black Plague. By the time it had done its dastardly work, the population of Europe had been so severely decimated that human life on every level, from personal and social to religious, political and economic, was forever altered.

The plague was so overwhelming and so relentless that medieval man had only one explanation for it: the wrath of God. It was compared to the biblical Great Flood and was seen as yet another attempt at divine housecleaning. People were convinced that, as in Noah's time, the human race was scheduled for destruction; more than one chronicler of the day sincerely believed that he was witnessing "the extermination of mankind" ...

... The world didn't end in 1347, or during the Great Plague of 1665, or in any of the other plague years. It didn't end in 1918, when the Spanish influenza pandemic, which operated in much the same way as the bubonic "yersenia pestis," went on a global killing spree that wiped out whole communities at record speed. It didn't end during the SARS panic of 2003, or with the avian flu scare in 2006. And chances are it won't end in 2009, with H1N1 stalking the earth.

In fact, with all the medical and technological advances in the 91 years since the 1918 global pandemic, we're considerably more prepared for this very moment -- the "next" pandemic that experts have been expecting for at least two decades. So, there's a good possibility that contraction of the H1N1 flu can be contained, and death tolls kept at a minimum. The point is, are we going to allow the very idea of a pandemic to create pandemonium? Or are we going to put on our thinking caps, settle down, and fight a "smart" war of vigilance and reason?

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