Wizard's Blog

When I moved from the UK to the US, one of the differences I noticed was in weather reporting.  First of all it's a lot more accurate, but I think that's a matter of geography not competence - the UK is on the meeting point of three weather systems, so if the meeting point moves slightly you can go from tropical to arctic, which makes it impossible to predict.  Atlanta is far enough inland that the meteorologists can see the weather systems coming several days out, and so their predictions are very accurate.  In the UK the weather report always says "chance of rain", "chance of sun" etc. so either you always carry an umbrella or never carry one because the prediction is no help.  In Atlanta, if the weather report says it's going to rain you'd better bring an umbrella because it is going to rain.

The other thing I noticed about the difference in weather reporting was the hyperbole.  In the UK they just say it might rain, whereas in the US they say DANGER - Severe rain warning! It's always "DANGER - Severe something warning", whether that's rain or clouds or wind or sun.  Every day you're in danger of the sky trying to kill you.

Now to be fair, sometimes the sky does try to kill you here.  They have tornadoes and floods every year.  Setting aside the question of why you would choose to live in such a precarious environment (I'm also looking at you, California and New Orleans), it's still not that dangerous every day, the way they're reporting it.

I do understand why they exaggerate, even if I find it reprehensible.  Information is so freely available now that they can't really sell it anymore.  Why would you watch a weather report on TV when you could look it up online in a fraction of the time and at your convenience instead of theirs.  The answer is that if they can convince you that your life depends on watching their report then you're more likely to do it.

The long term consequences of all of this hype is either (like me) you see all news reporting as tainted and ignore the tornado warnings (probably unwise), or you live in a constant state of fear.  I think that's where most people are, nowadays - they've had so much of this kind of exaggeration that they see the world as a terrifying place - terrorists under every rock, pedophiles behind every bush!  Then they overreact, wrap their children in bubble wrap and who knows what problems that will cause a generation down the road.

If this is what news companies do for something as inconsequential as a weather report, imagine how much worse it is with real news.

Which brings us to a very recent news story that I'm sure we will be beaten over the head with for the foreseeable future - swine flu.  Some people in Mexico died of a new strain of the flu, and people who were recently in Mexico brought it to the US, New Zealand and Spain.  The World Health Organization has warned of a possible pandemic.

The overreaction is immediate and extreme - doctors are telling concerned patients to wear masks, countries are planning quarantines, and the news reporting goes into hyperbole overdrive.

Now I don't deny that a pandemic is possible - I don't doubt that this is an unusually nasty variant of flu - but look at the facts of the story and it's not as frightening as it seems.  There are no deaths outside of Mexico and Mexico wouldn't be on the top of the list when it comes to good nutrition, hygiene or health-care.  If you're concerned about getting any kind of flu, a doctor will tell you to wear a mask.  Planning quarantines is not the same as implementing them - governments are constantly planning for worst case scenarios and responses to disasters.  The World Health Organisation has warned there could be a pandemic, but it's their job to warn about things like that - they're still meeting with medical experts to advise on whether to raise the alert level.

It's by no means the end of the world, but guess how it's being reported.  If this all sounds very familiar, look through the news archives for avian flu and West Nile virus.  Remember when they wiped us all out?  No?

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