Avoid Catching Hate - Wash Your Hands and Don't Blame

Michael Savage is a savage.  How can anyone tolerate a radio broadcaster who says a group of people are used for "germ warfare?"  As for hate monger Jay Severin, it is a good thing that his employer, WTKK Radio suspended him for saying that a certain group is the "lowest of primitives?" 

The idea that people with dark skin should be quarantined is crazy - that means most of the whole world! Wake up people, those with "white" skin are a very small minority of the global population.  Are we wanting to make the world like the old South Africa?

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Globe editorial

The Boston Globe

Panic and hate can be viral, too

May 2, 2009

ANOTHER DANGEROUS contagion is accompanying swine flu as it makes its way through the country: the spread of ugly invective aimed at Mexicans, and xenophobia more generally about the outside world. Calls to close the border with Mexico, kill massive herds of pigs, halt international trade, or quarantine people with dark skin are not supported by science and should be called out for what they are: paranoia.

On Thursday, talk-show host Jay Severin was suspended by WTKK Radio for referring to Mexicans as "the world's lowest of primitives" and other, more juvenile slurs. He is hardly unique in this strain of bluster. Nationally syndicated talk-show host Michael Savage speculated that Mexicans could be human weapons of germ warfare, set loose into America by our terrorist enemies. A Houston city councilor blasted a local hospital for even admitting the little boy who died from the virus - the only confirmed death so far in the United States - because he was visiting from Mexico.

In Egypt, the government ordered the slaughter of some 300,000 pigs, inflaming tensions between the Muslim government and the Christian minority that includes almost all the pig farmers in that volatile country. (Muslims do not eat pork.) This even though the World Health Organization is adamant that the virus is not foodborne and that no one has been infected through contact with pigs.

Closing international borders won't help contain the virus and could hurt, because it can slow down trade in vaccines and goods needed to treat a pandemic. And there's a generalized misunderstanding about scale that inflates the threat of the new strain. In an ordinary year, flu causes about 36,000 deaths in the United States. So far, out of 140 confirmed cases in the United States as of yesterday, the swine flu has caused one.

Naturally, cautions should be taken. In Lowell, the two boys who contracted the flu after visiting Mexico on a family vacation were right to stay home from school, and the Harvard dental school was wise to shut down its clinic and classrooms there while several suspected cases are confirmed.

But there are so many more important things to be concerned about that this new flu scare has brought into relief: the fact that 43 million Americans still don't have a healthcare provider to advise or treat them if symptoms occur, for just one example. Pointing fingers and stoking passions about "others" may satisfy a need for scapegoats. But Americans can do more to stay safe by simply washing their hands.

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