Coughing up bacon (or Why the Swine Flu won’t kill you just yet)

Last week, while friends and I were discussing the sensationalistic news coverage of the swine flu pandemic, I was joking that if you were not coughing up bacon, you were probably OK.

I fact, I wasn’t so much joking about the flu itself than about how (dis)information is presented in sensationalist news channels such CNN, Fox, or even Montréal-based LCN. Earlier this week, news were that the flu had already caused tens, maybe hundreds, of deaths, but that data was presented as if, you know, you just catch the swine flu and you die right away from it. However, on Thursday morning, on the radio, I heard that the Mexican authorities recounted “swine flu” death to… less than ten. To really understand what’s going on, you really have to do some research, and sometimes what you discover is radically different from what you’ve been told.