Pandemics

One of these things is not like the other:

SARS: 775 deaths
West Nile Virus: 124 deaths (2007 U.S. figure)
Avian Flu: 257 deaths (since 2003)
Swine Flu: 25 deaths in Mexico, 1 death in the United States
Influenza (the "regular" flu): 250,000-500,000 deaths worldwide, 36,000 deaths in the United States annually

What do SARS, the West Nile Virus, the Avian Flu and the Swine Flu have in common? They get way more attention from the media; and they kill a vastly smaller number of people than Plain Jane Flu.

So why the breathless coverage by the 24x7 news media for diseases with scary names that don't do much harm compared to the regular, everyday flu that kills hundreds of thousands every year? And if every sniffle is a pandemic, how are we going to tell when we really have a serious and dangerous problem like the Spanish Flu which killed between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 people?