Friday, May 8, 2009

[FAO] Top 10 Widespread PANICS In The World




 
 
 
 
 
 
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Top 10 Widespread PANICS In The World
 
 
SWINE FLU



It, it's all right to take a deep breath and calm down a bit about swine flu.
Despite the hyperventilating media reports of recent weeks odds are pretty good
you're not going to be felled by the nasty but generally non-fatal H1N1 virus. This may
come as a shock to, say, Egypt, which ordered all of its pigs slaughtered in a misguided
attempt to stop the spread of the flu (which, reports indicate, is not transmitted from pig to person).

Infections are falling in Mexico, the country hardest-hit by the flu bug,
and the World Health Organization said the virus has not yet created a sustained
outbreak in Europe. Though new cases are popping up around the globe each day, it appears
that a widespread global pandemic isn't forthcoming. Just like SARS and the avian flu before it,
H1N1 probably will cause more damage through anxiety than actual infection

SALMONELLA



If there's one panic that reoccurs like clockwork, it's salmonella in the food supply. Picking any one
outbreak almost seems unfair — just this year companies pulled tainted peanut butter from store shelves
due to salmonella fears. But it might be tough to outdo the 2008 outbreak in terms of sheer ridiculousness.

After more than a thousand were sickened by one of the worst outbreaks of salmonella in the U.S. in years,
authorities pulled several varieties of tomatoes from the food supply. Electing to be overcautious, some restaurants
pulled tomatoes off the menu entirely. Across the land, salad bars and Taco Bells were bleak, lycopene-free wastelands.
And it very likely was all for naught. In the end, authorities said the outbreak could just as well have come from jalapeno peppers o

WAR Of The WORLDS



Call it the first widespread scare of the wireless era.
By 1938, the radio was ubiquitous and the radio drama was
in its heyday, and no one took greater advantage than broadcaster Orson Welles.
On Oct. 31, radio audiences who believed they were tuning into a concert were instead treated to
Welles' dramatization of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The concert was interrupted frequently by Welles masquerading
as a news announcer, giving frenzied updates of a Martian invasion of Earth. Though he mentioned at several points during the
broadcast that it was merely a dramatization, thousands of listeners panicked — stockpiling supplies and barricading their homes
against aliens who existed on the airwaves alone.

Not learning the lesson of the U.S. panic, an Ecuadorian radio station tried a similar stunt in 1949.
Listeners were not amused and burned its offices to the ground in retaliation

MAD COW DISEASE



Mad cow disease is the sinister name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and it's deserved.
Though not contagious through person-to-person contact, mad cow disease is terrifying for its deadly effects.
The disease, which manifests itself as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, gradually destroys nervous tissue in the brain,
resulting in dementia, memory loss, seizures and death. The disease is incurable and always fatal.

Humans can contract the disease by eating brain or spinal tissue from an infected cow,
parts of which can be contained in ground beef or some other contaminated cuts if proper safety
measures aren't observed. The largest outbreak occurred in Britain beginning in 1984, killing more than 150 people.
Infection has been kept down largely by rapid quarantines of infected herds and changes in feeding practices that prevent
cows from being fed the ground remains of other cattle — a common way the disease spreads

Tylenol Poisonings



When seven people died after ingesting Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide in the Chicago area,
the authorities had no way of knowing just how far the September 1982 tampering had spread. Officials took to the streets
with megaphones, warning residents to throw out any capsules they may have lying around their home.

Health officials now suspect someone tampered with the pills on the drugstore shelves,
though they've never arrested anyone in the case.(In February, the FBI reopened its investigation
of tax consultant James Lewis, who had written a letter to Tylenol's manufacturer in October 1982
demanding $1 million to "stop the killings." Lewis has denied responsibility.) The incident set off waves of copycat
incidents across the country, in some cases resulting in serious illness or fatalities. Tylenol lost millions recalling pills
from around the country and millions more in lost sales. The panic didn't subside until the FDA mandated new
tamper-proof safety measures for food and over-the-counter drugs, dramatically improving product safety.
Red Dye No. 2



Even today, artificial dyes are subject to some of the most bizarre fears and nastiest urban legends.
Blame Red Dye No. 2. In the 1970s, Soviet scientists claimed a link between the dye — used in everything from
sausage casings and ice cream to makeup — and cancer, and U.S. tests proved some correlation as well. Though it was
never linked to any deaths or illnesses, the substance was banned from U.S. shelves in 1976. Consumer worries were enough
to get the Mars candy company to pull red M&Ms from their lineup of colors, even though they never contained any Red Dye No. 2
to begin with. It would take 10 years for the collective panic to fade — and for the M&M spectrum to be complete.
DDT



Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (or DDT, to avoid the mouthful) was supposed to be a magic bullet against insect infestations.
The insecticide was so effective, experts talked about finally eradicating illnesses like malaria and improving crop yields safely and cheaply.
The chemist who discovered the compound's use as an insecticide even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. One tiny little problem —
no one stopped to check the effect DDT had on the environment all by itself.

As a result, DDT birthed one of the first environmental-related panics. Biologist Rachel Carson
penned the seminal book Silent Spring, questioning the widespread use of DDT and outlining its disastrous
effects on the environment. Accumulating in the soil and in the food chain, DDT could reach toxic levels among
animal populations as far away as the Arctic. Later testing revealed it also had damaging health effects on people,
causing confusion, reproductive damage and increased cancer rates. The resulting outcry was enough to cause
DDT to be banned in the U.S. in 1972.
Y2K



There may not be an original joke left to make about the Y2K pandemonium — that's how ridiculous this
global panic ended up being. At the stroke of midnight at the turn of the millennium,
our computers were supposed to kill us all. Or something like that.

Chalk it up to shortsightedness: computer programmers had long notated years with only
two digits — 97, 98, 99 and so forth — apparently never considering what would happen in the year 2000,
when the date would revert back to year 00. Would the machines recognize the new number? Would they freeze up?
Would they fundamentally and irrevocably crash, taking us back to the year zero with them? Panicked prognosticators predicted
airplanes would fall from the sky, electrical grids would shut down and the planet's entire information infrastructure would grind to a halt.
Countries like the U.S. and United Kingdom spent millions to patch and fix the error while others took a wait-and-see approach.

There wasn't much to see. As the clock struck midnight in Asia and Sydney was still standing,
the rest of the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. As the festivities rolled on, there were few glitches:
a row of slot machines went out in Delaware and a few dates appeared wrong on the Web,
but that's indicative of the extent of it. The morning of January 1, 2000 dawned to a world
now much more concerned about their hangovers than death by computer glitch.
SARS



One reason the response to the H1N1 outbreak has been so efficient is the lessons learned from SARS.
Properly called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, this nasty little virus hopped from animals to humans
in southern China, killing the first man infected with the strain in Nov. 2002. Media-phobic China didn't see the need to
worry its population or anyone else about this exotic new virus, so SARS spread largely unchecked in China — until a
mainland businessman visited Hong Kong, bringing the virus with him and infecting dozens of others. By the time an American
contracted the strain during a Chinese business trip, the virus finally got its turn under the Klieg lights.

As doomsday scenarios played out on cable news and in the press, a worried world stocked up on face masks
and bottled water to await the apocalypse. Except SARS didn't oblige. Just over 8,000 people ended up infected with SARS,
though it did kill nearly 800 — mostly in China and Hong Kong. By July 2003, there were no more human cases of SARS and the virus
is considered contained today. Officials warn that SARS could return; the virus is still circulating with its animal host.
Let's hope it's content to stay put.
 
 
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