Swine Contd.

When I was trying to explain the swine flu basics to my 6 year old son, he immediately asked, ‘Pa, I thought only the big bad wolf is bad and the 3 little pigs are good?’ Yes, may be that could be the reason why we call this as a Swine Flu and not a Pig flu – to spare the poor 3 little pigs!

Though the media appears to have moved away from the swine flue scare and other issues have started appearing in the headlines over the last few days, but the effects of paranoia is still a scare. Fortunately, the good thing I am observing in the media’s stance over the past few days, is one of education and awareness along with the deathometer, they track every minute. But, credit sure goes to them for some of the most informative discussions with people from the medical fraternity from across the globe.

That, I think, is the fundamental issue in the way this crisis was managed by the civic administration. One of the parodies of this information age is our disability to sift out the right information – perhaps the semantic web would fix that. While googling, gives me every bit of information, it does not help me in deciding what is right for me. Perhaps you would soon see information about swine flu awareness appear first in the page rank than the horror stories of the epidemic.

Creating the right public awareness was the most missed-out portion in managing this crisis. The moment, this pandemic showed its color, the government or even any socially inclined pharmaceutical corporate could have launched

a) Full-page advertisement to educate the masses on the basic hygiene steps to be followed

b) Distribute pamphlets to the masses

c) Use the government owned TV channels to communicate, rather than showing the pathetic state of the people queuing up at the despicably few testing centers at our disposal

Sounds too common-sensical?