Week 7: Down with The Sickness

H1N1, the disease that has been making headlines since it was identified back in April this year. Up till today, articles about the infection are still on the front pages of newspapers. Be it developments to counter the pandemic, or a new string of infection related deaths, the lingering presence of "swine flu" articles, and the way they are presented, world definitely stir up some anti-germ paranoia. So much as sneeze while in a crowded train and all of a sudden people treat you like you are the leaper of the new century. They will do whatever it takes to stay away from you, especially if that sneeze was followed by another or a bad case of sniffles. Gone are the good old days when a sneeze would not even cause a single head to turn in your direction. If that is not a sign of the growing paranoia about infection, I do not know what is.


First, "Hand foot and mouth disease" then "SARS" then the common cold and now this. This is called "Agenda setting" in which the media drums up the importance of the flu pandemic, which in my opinion, is blown up a little bit too big. If you thought that only the newspapers are responsible for fanning flames of the paranoia, I would gladly direct you attention over to many bus stops in Singapore. Posters featuring a greenish festering hand made up of many superimposed images of gruesome creatures meant to symbolize germs. The tagline reads "Stop the Horror with Soap and Water". Then I shall direct you to television and the increasing number of advertisements about hand sanitizing soaps, anti bacterial detergent, "Dettol" and other germ killing liquids. Most of their advertisements tend to use a "scare" technique by over dramatizing the presence of bacteria on surfaces like floors or doorknobs.

Anyone notice a pattern forming? Flu pandemic leads to increase attention paid to hygiene. To further help in the overall "hygiene campaign" and to bank on the increasing number of people growing paranoid about hygiene, the media drums it up further. But wait, a more sinister reason why the media might want to drum up the paranoia about germs is because they are paid to do so. Their sponsors, in the form of the advertisers of said sanitation and anti bacterial products would stand to gain if more people grew paranoid and bought more of their products. It is a cycle of conspiracy here!

The topic of "germs" is quite an unobtrusive one. Who has actually had first hand experience of getting a swab sample from a door knob and isolating the micro-organisms in a laboratory aside from biology students? And with the stringent control of laboratory equipment in various tertiary institutions, one is not allowed to use the equipment to "satisfy curiosity" only to do what the lesson for the day requires of you. Hence, very few people actually have first hand experience dealing with the actual number of germs found on a door knob. Most of the information about how unhygienic a door knob or a sand pit is comes from top scientists only anyway, hence people will believe anything the "experts” say.

Those of us who lived long enough would know that this growing over blown obsession with hygiene was not present back in the "good old days". Today, you get the impression that a child would die of infection if he were to as much as crawl through a puddle. Back then, children played in drains and wallowed in swamp lands yet they were just as healthy as children nowadays. In fact, based on basic biology alone, exposure to germs is required for the body to build its own immune system. We can thus see that this germ paranoia was cultivated indirectly, and was cumulative over time.

Now the conspiracy comes full circle. The media messages, funded by their sponsors, make people paranoid about hygiene. This increases sales of the products the sponsors are selling. The over reliance on those disinfectants and anti bacterial liquids will, in theory, indirectly create a generation of children with a weaker immunity system. Sooner or later, this new generation will become dependent on the anti bacterial products thus ensuring an enduring clientele for the marketers of the products. The media companies benefit, and so do their sponsors.

Get down with the sickness ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the new age of paranoia.