This disease is presented like some elusive serial killer in the news. In actuality, it’s a rather selective virus (more rampant amongst birds than anything else), where the most susceptible human individuals are the elderly and organ transplant recipients. Ninety percent of people, otherwise, wouldn’t even know they were infected.
4. H1N1 (Swine Flu)
Never before had the flu shot been as popular as the latest iPhone. In the immediate aftermath of the breakout, vaccine doses couldn’t be supplied enough to meet the unruly demand. Tales of a “fatal flu,” far worse than the drink-ginger-ale-and-lie-in-bed-all-day flu, was enough to scare every hypochondriac to death. Or at least into making the waiting line for the CVS Minute Clinic look like the line to get Dr. Oz’s autograph.
3. Charlie Sheen
Why was this man the center of American focus (and even Piers Morgan’s focus) for so long? Is it simply human nature to obsess over the meaningless, or do we just love to watch someone successful spiral downhill? Or is it both?
Whatever the reason, he was plastered all over every possible media outlet: his manic, oddball Twitter rants and paranoia-drenched vlogs were the source of several professionally-conducted interviews and a million memes and punchlines for talk show monologues (George Lopez would still be making Sheen jokes if his show hadn’t been cancelled…so pre-maturely). He was a national obsession and yet the source of almost zero sympathy. Recently, he’s confessed to having been in a weird place during all of Sheen-o-mania, and that he’s since reformed. But reformation is a very fleeting news story, so nobody really cared.
2. Tainted Cantaloupe
A strain of some kind of deadly bacteria called listeria monocytogenes was found in cantaloupe linked to a single farm. Twenty-plus deaths have been linked to the fruit, but any death is proven to be too much to risk a visit to your local fruit stand. Certainly the amount of cantaloupe consumed after reports of the outbreak must’ve decreased dramatically. And here we thought calling someone a fruit was to say they were harmless and dainty; in a new context, being called a fruit is the equivalent of calling someone a proven killing machine.
1. 2012
Sometimes news stories feel compelled to report on myths and superstitions. For instance, when the film 2012 was released, a news special (or maybe just Entertainment Tonight) felt the need to drench the movie in rumors and paranoia surrounding the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus predictions of the supposedly-approaching apocalypse. TV commercials, Facebook statuses, and other contributors to the cultural conversation only kept the pot continually stirred. With the wrong kind of information, a susceptible person might actually believe this is happening.
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