The SARS epidemic. Images of people donning surgical masks in hopes of escaping the disease and staying alive were beamed worldwide. In America, news stations were broadcasting SARS updates hourly. We were told this was the next worldwide plague and a lot of us got pretty scared.

SARS first broke out in China, and their ensuing cover-ups led to a greater than normal export of the virus. People around the world panicked. In the end the virus faded away, but not without a death toll. How many people died from this virus that had the entire world on edge? 774. Though I would not want to be one of the 774, if you put that figure up against a world population of 6.4 billion, it simply does not “deserve” the fear it received.

Our current fascination/paranoia is the West Nile Virus. Children are being kept indoors after dark and lathered up daily with pesticides (DEET). Insect bites require a trip to the emergency ward. In 2003 there were 264 confirmed deaths. Though this figure might seem initially high there were more deaths from heat stroke (300)… though not as low as lightning strikes (90). The common flu kills a thousand times over, yet it’s rare to see people line up for their $10 flu shots.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that in America 20,000 people die from the flu and its complications every year. Car crashes claimed 47,000 lives in 2003; the current average is 114 killed per day! 5000 people per year die of food poisoning. 4000 people drown in swimming pools annually. Why is there is no national call to stop driving, eating in restaurants or swimming? The answer is obvious.

In this age of information, the medias (TV, Radio, Press and the Internet) no longer concern themselves with the common-place. With so much info available, even people being hit by lightning (once the standard for rarity of occurrence) have become mundane… last page news. The absurd, the unusual, and the terrifying have become the norm. Why report on a car crash when there is a mosquito that can kill you?

The viewer is also responsible. Through the medias, we have become so de-sensitized to normal life and death that our ears perk up when we hear of something new, unknown and forbidding. We want to get as much data as we can…and the medias respond. Kind of a chicken or the egg scenario. What comes first… a disease or our fascination with a disease?

Before you get sucked into a given fear, do your research. Use the internet to investigate what horror you have heard about. Go beyond just the statistical figures and look at the whole picture. The people dying from West Nile Virus were elderly or sickly before becoming infected… who knew? In actuality, healthy people have nothing to fear.

This paranoia has entered the mainstream. We are told of all the dangers to our children. Kids are required by law to wear protective gear on bicycles and skateboards. Tag isn’t allowed at school. Try to buy a hooded jersey with tie strings around the neck. Because of a few unfortunate accidents, an entire generation of kids will do without. No more jungle-gyms, teeter-totters, merry-go-rounds, or slip-n-slides.

Statistics to help keep things in perspective:

• The odds of winning the California lottery by matching all six numbers are 14 times greater than the odds of being struck by lightening, according to Lottery magazine. the figure drops to nine times greater in New Jersey, six times greater in Pennsylvania, and four times greater in Connecticut.
• More than 2,500 left handed people are killed every year from using right handed product.
• Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed people.
• More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
• 13 people are killed each year by vending machine's falling on them.