Swine Flu, Swine Flu, watchya gonna Do!

In this month’s blog we are supposed to blog about different stories involving crisis communication in public relations. I decided instead of focusing on the flood crisis we’ve been having in south eastern North Dakota to go off and find another story about something besides the raging waters of the mighty Sheyenne and the Red River. So, procrastinating as I have done throughout my entire life I found a gem of a story from usatoday about swine flu. Yes, bacon is back and pork has left the fork with a deadly outbreak in several U.S. states. Pig flu is a respiratory infection similar to the flu, except only three cases were reported in history before the outbreak, and they don’t know how it spreads. . The United States has declared a public health emergency over swine flu, “don’t worry there are no cases declared in North Dakota, thank god we’ve been through enough.” However there has been officials reporting 20 different cases in New York, California, Texas, Kansas, and Ohio. Eight students from Queens New York have been diagnosed with the pig flu after spring breaking in Mexico, “glad I went to Florida.”There have been 81 cases throughout Mexico including 20 deaths there from the pig influenza.
When the United States health officials declared an emergency this enabled them to stockpile and move 12 million doses of Tamiflu to the states with confirmed cases. This is a prime example of crisis communication by acting fast and getting the needed supplies. Another example the government has put in place to avoid more out breaks is setting up a strict border patrol protocol, so border guards can inspect people and ask them if they are sick and find people who look under the weather. Health authorities expect the disease to spread and Richard Besser, acting director from the center of disease control said “We are responding aggressively.” This statement reassures people health authorities and the government are on the case and not to worry.
However, since pig flu is a new threat and doesn’t usually spread to humans it may be starting to cause a pandemic throughout the globe. Cases have been reported in from Canada to New Zealand and officials around the world are worried Mexico didn’t relay information about the many cases they have already encountered to other nations. Now that the word has spread about pig flu many different governments are taking precautionary actions like Mexico, which has canceled church services and shut down food outlets. Pork bans may also be put into place throughout Mexico. Only time will tell if this turns into a global epidemic like sars and the bird flu, which disappear from news papers just like the pig flu will. I always found that weird when something like this breaks you never hear about in the following months or what the status of the outbreaks are. Well maybe that’s because effective crisis communication is implemented to help stop it, just a guess.