Swine flu lesson: Difference between panic, caution

By Abigail Goldman

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Days after news of swine flu broke, people in white surgical masks were milling around McCarran International Airport — travelers trying to filter a virus out of the air, some carrying, no doubt, little bottles of hand sanitizer in their pockets.

And while the popular news narrative would have you believe this is the stuff of sheer panic — people in surgical masks, hysterical hand washing, warnings to stay out of public spaces — that’s hardly the case.

The truth is that people seldom panic during a crisis. At least when you consider the actual definition of panic: sudden, hysterical fear that is, above all else, irrational.

By that definition, we’ve been doing the opposite of panicking. We’ve been cautious. People wearing surgical masks are taking steps to protect themselves, which is an inherently rational thing, even if you personally find wearing a mask around town is a little overwrought.

Of course, “Americans extremely cautious about flu strain” is a lousy headline. But fear-mongering swine flu stories could have an unintended consequence, perhaps scarier than the virus itself: If H1N1 doesn’t live up to the hype, if the warnings from government and health officials all appear overblown in retrospect, what will we do when something really worth panicking about happens?

This is the real danger — the boy who cried catastrophe. Of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt said it better in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Disaster sociology (yes, there is such a field) has shown for decades that people really don’t panic, which is the point New York University professor Eric Klinenberg, who has written on the subject, tried to make when a national ABC News reporter contacted him for quotes about people panicking. Klinenberg agreed to the interview, but explained that he doesn’t believe people are panicking, not just because of the actual meaning of panic, but because, well, look around — is anybody really panicking?

When the story ran, his quotes were buried under a subheading that read “Not Enough Panic?”

Klinenberg complained, and his quote was removed entirely from the story, which presented another problem: Cut Klinenberg out of the article, and only a panicky story about panicking remained. (The story ran alongside a photo montage of an atomic bomb, a man in a hazmat suit, an anonymous scientist seemingly testing something and a pig lazing in mud.)

When asked whether the tourists taking over McCarran in face masks were at least some sign of soft panic, Klinenberg was quick to make the more meaningful point: If they were really panicking, they wouldn’t be at the airport in the first place.

On May 2, World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan said she expected the swine flu pandemic alert to soon get elevated to a Level 6, which is the maximum. This announcement of a future announcement was made, Chan told Spain’s El Pais newspaper, to prevent unnecessary panic when the WHO ratchets up the alert level as high as it can go.

But at some point, after endless stories about swine flu hysteria, telling people not to panic almost has the opposite effect — like a nurse who says “this isn’t going to hurt” a little too sweetly before your booster shot.

The government undermines its own credibility and reduces its ability to be effective during emergencies when it issues silly warnings, or overreacts too quickly, Klinenberg said. The same goes for journalists, who risk discrediting themselves by running away with stories. A local newscast, for example, wondered whether going to the “Wolverine” movie premiere was safe with swine flu in the air.

The economy is bad enough, Klinenberg said, without scaring people away from movies and malls and supermarkets and, in our case, McCarran.