Are Outbreaks Still a Concern?

Cherie Burbach — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:23:10 +0000

Caught an interesting article recently that wondered what happened to all of our fears about disease outbreaks. You remember the hoopla over SARS, West Nile, and the Avian flu?

For a while, that’s all anyone could talk about. We were watching the crows in our backyard closely because if you saw one dead it could mean the West Nile virus had killed it. People were buying surgical masks and staying away from standing water.

But now, just a few years later, talk of these diseases is almost nonexistent. The article questioned where this was due to an actual decline in these diseases, or less media attention. Given the state of the economy and healthcare status in the U.S., it seems that the attention has simply shifted. We can only worry about so many things at one time, and when you don’t have a job and can’t afford health insurance, the West Nile virus and SARS seem light years away.