May 4, 2009 10:22 AM
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New York, 9:30 AM
Wed Feb 10
56 posts in the last 24 hours
After more than a week of SWINE FLU PANIC, the very media outlets that help fuel the PANIC are starting to agree with our original assessment: this whole thing is kind of a farce.
For example! Joe Lauria is a WSJ reporter who came down with a bad case of the flu right after the PANIC hit New York. He set out to try to get tested and see if he had the deadly swine flu. Turns out, that's impossible! The city, the state, doctors, and hospitals all passed him off to someone else, with the final outcome being: you can't really get tested for swine flu in NYC, and they don't want to test you, so just forget it.
But it's still very, you know, dangerous.
So the media finds itself coming to the realization that this whole thing is overblown, but still being forced to cater to the public fears that they created last week. Now newspapers are in the position of simultaneously reporting that the DEADLY SWINE FLU is actually "mild," but officials are still very concerned, so stay tuned to our live breaking updates on the outbreak.
And naturally, the papers that stoked the panic the most are also the quickest to holler that the whole thing is over. The New York Post is already calling it "hogwash." You think the institutional memory of tabloids is more than one day? Sheeeit.
But stay tuned for the next panic!
[Yea]
Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.
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