The recent swine flu (er, H1N1 virus) outbreak has reminded me a lot of our economy here over the last few days. Is there a real problem? Yes. If you catch the swine flu, could it be serious? Yes. Is the size of the swine flu anywhere near the pandemic the media is making it out to be? I’d have to say “no” to that one.
It has amazed me the power of the media when it comes to spreading fear and causing us to want to go right back to the media for more “valuable information”. I have a brother- and sister-in-law who live on a remote Young Life camp in the desert of Oregon. To put it in perspective, the driveway is 13 miles long and the nearest grocery store is an hour away. My wife Amy was talking to them about the swine flu outbreak, and they had mentioned that they were asking other folks at camp about the disease, only to get the reply of “What’s the swine flu?”.
How can you not know about the swine flu!!? It’s everywhere – sending stocks spiraling, shutting down school systems, closing countries’ borders, changing the world as we know it (okay, I’m getting carried away here…). So far there have been 10 deaths worldwide, 1 in the US. But on average, there are 35,000 deaths per year in the US from the normal flu. Why isn’t the media pumping that information? Because it doesn’t sell. Just the name “swine flu” makes me picture a raging pig with bloodshot eyes, foaming at the mouth who wants to dig its teeth into me and cackle as it infects me with the deadly disease.
Again, I don’t think this is all to far from what’s happened in the economy. Yes, we got ourselves in some serious trouble with the debt – credit – housing mess. Yes, plenty of companies were way too leveraged. But the fact that the media was able to take real statistics and turn them into blood-curtling tales did nothing but make people afraid. And fear then turns into panic.
I hope you don’t hear me say that both the current health situation and our world economy are just nice and rosy. They’re not. But the media’s goal is to play to our emotions. Their goal is to sell press time – that’s it. My challenge to us all is to be cautious, but not fearful. Be cautious when around people who are hacking and sneezing right now. Wash your hands a lot. But don’t let that caution turn to fear over the what ifs. Be cautious when handling God’s money. Avoid debt when possible, spend less than you earn, invest prudently. But don’t take your investments and sell them to invest in bullets and dogs because of “what if it’s different this time”.
The Father doesn’t want us to have fear of man, disease, or money, but only of God alone. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pandemic of that?
Filed under: Fear, The Economy Tagged: | economy, Fear, swine flu
