Modern media seems to be full of references to a violent natural system that, having seen human destruction of the environment and depletion of natural resources, will rain new emerging diseases down upon us. Accompanying such statements is vivid imagery of Ebola patients bleeding out and of Bird Flu patients on massive antiviral drips, slowly wasting away in hospital beds. Even while diseases run rampant, the media is looking toward a new and larger catastrophe. “New” emerging diseases are commonly sensationalized, an new series of reports coming along every few years. Three of these diseases lucky enough to have the spotlight are HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and the most recent, bird flu.

If anything, HIV/AIDS is the most legitimate of all the emerging diseases that have been garnered media attention- it is pandemic and has severely affected the human race. In fact, its attention has been very different from other emerging diseases, as it is not seen as an impending doom, but as something manageable, even routine. In a strong contrast to the wildfire of media attention in the 1980’s, HIV/AIDS is often absent from discussions of the poverty of developing nations, or barely mentioned when it may the root of a problem. In many articles, for example, the recent report from the International Herald Tribune, HIV/AIDS is shown as a manageable illness in spite of the long-term cost, difficultly for many people to achieve health-care coverage for treatment, and its 100% fatality rate. (McNeil) In the light of recent research and statistical adjustment on the part of the UN that placed the number of new HIV infections at six million people below what was previously calculated, the author seems to have little understanding of the sheer millions people that means are currently infected, especially in some regional areas, or that those approximations may be massively underestimated by the governments of developing nations(). Ultimately, the media fails to initiate a discussion of the humanitarian issues and full impact of the HIV virus, both in the US and abroad.

Ebola is quite possibly humanity’s favorite virus. Of its three human-infecting strains, Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire and Zaire, with 50%, 60% and 90-95% case-fatality rates, respectively, Zaire’s is naturally the most commonly cited. For example, Karen Springen’s Newsweek Q&A article incorrectly cites Marburg as having a 90% death rate, where it is only 40%. (Springen) This high rate of death of Ebola Zaire has led to a massive misunderstanding of Ebola and Marburg as being an inescapable death sentence out to destroy the human race. For example, Richard Preston’s best-selling book about Ebola, The Hot Zone, describes the bleeding out of a patient whose Marburg infection, a very closely related disease of Ebola, has progressed to a fatal infection: “then comes a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half, which is the sound of his bowels opening and venting blood from the anus. He has sloughed his gut.

The linings of his intestines have come off and are being expelled along with huge amounts of blood…. Pools of blood spread out around him, enlarging rapidly.” (Preston 24). Full of similar descriptions, this book, and many other reports, has seen intense criticism for these exaggerated descriptions of the virus’ infection. The reports of several scientists, however, stating that they have never seen anything quite so horrifying as the mutilated cells of Ebola patients under a microscope, have led to the incorrect description of Ebola as progressing to an explosion of blood, instead of the wasting away of patients that usually accompanies infection (Garrett 124). Ebola is the media’s poster child for emerging diseases, incorrectly depicted as a Hollywood virus- which it became in the 1995 movie “Outbreak”.

Finally, Bird Flu, the “what if” virus. What if such a virus spread through migrating bird populations and entered other countries? What if every poultry worker and rural family raising chickens was at the mercy of a deadly virus? What if bird flu infected enough humans that it mutated and became as contagious as a normal flu virus? Reports about bird flu haunted many news channels and articles in the last several years. However, this is nothing new. Since the epidemic of 1918, the media has been looking for the next great flu strain that will hit the United States. When poultry workers in poor sanitary conditions showed up Southeast Asian hospitals with viral pneumonia, the global healthcare community took interest. Ultimately, the bird flu, like all other flus, makes for an entertaining story due to its unpredictably as an RNA virus with a high mutation rate. News articles typically focus on the worst-case scenario of a global pandemic: for example, in this CNN article from 2006, the author writes that “The grimmest scenario would be a global epidemic to rival the flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which claimed millions of lives worldwide.” (CNN) The bird flu, as with other flu strains, is an exercise in making grim predictions that fascinate viewers.

Ebola, in its current form is not a huge threat for a pandemic. Ebola is an abnormally stable RNA virus that is extremely difficult to communicate, usually occurring in hospitals due to contamination of needles and personnel contact with the infected (CDC). As a virus, the Ebola virus kills so many of its hosts, and is in the body for so little time (about two weeks) before the host is very ill, that it is unlikely to transfer to other humans while contagious (CDC). A similar pattern emerges in the wild, where monkey populations infected with Ebola quickly crash, preventing further transmission. (Preston 64) Outbreaks of Ebola are typically very small, and have always been restricted to fewer than five hundred people. The biggest threat from Ebola does not come from a human strain, but from a simian strain, Ebola Reston. This virus has been observed to travel in aerosol particles and infect monkeys within a monkey house. This is not entirely known, as the monkeys in question were known to throw material that could have been infected (Preston 325). Ultimately, Ebola is not a threat to the larger human population, but is a concern is areas with poor sanitation and bad healthcare procedures, which means the area will have bigger fish to fry than a small outbreak of a rare pathogen- HIV, for example.

H1N1, the most deadly flu strain to date, killed about 10% of the humans it infected. The bird flu, not established in the human population and difficult to communicate, has a case-fatality rate of about 60%. (WHO) This recent chapter in flu history is similar to a media spotlight that fell on swine flu when a young military recruit came down with an aggressive virus, left the sick bay to go on a training run with a heavy pack in the snow and ice of New Jersey, collapsed and died (Garret 357). No one knew what exact strain was infecting him, whether the strain was highly virulent or whether the recruit sabotaged his own immune system. Similarly, researchers are unsure of whether the bird flu has a high case-fatality rate or if the sampling is error-prone, given the likelihood that a host with passing symptoms would not go the hospital and therefore not be recorded as compared to a host someone who developed viral pneumonia (CDC). It is possible that H5N1 will establish itself in the human population and incur deaths rate of H1N1 proportions- but it will be an epidemic in a world of modern technology and healthcare instead of the world of the 1910’s, possibly indistinguishable from other flu strains that kill the sick, the elderly and the young.

Humanity seems to be holding its breath, waiting for a challenging disease that will take it by surprise and force it to adjust many healthcare and social norms. It may not be a smallpox-Ebola hybrid, but that disease is upon us, and has been for decades. The news has generally done an excellent job of portraying the fact that HIV is in fact pandemic. The HIV virus is built for infecting humans, as it has a long period of contagiousness where it is infectious, is resistant to vaccination and treatment du to its tendency to infect the body in swarms of mutants, and established itself in the human population before its discovery in the 1980’s- it does not kill its host, but destroys the host’s immune system and lets another pathogen do the work, making the cause of the immune deficiency difficult to identify (AIDS 27). What the news does not do, however, is explain that HIV infection is fatal and that there are large infections in places other than Africa. In fact, many reports seem somehow out of touch with the widespread impact of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. For all the talk about new, dangerous infections, few seem to admit that we are smack in the middle of one.

As pathogens of which humans have a poor understanding, viruses fascinate most television audiences. Those that have the most gruesome courses of infection or the most deadly possible outcomes are ubiquitous in the media, forming observable trends. In the meantime, while newscaster try to predict when nature will turn on humankind, HIV simmers away in human hosts worldwide, with little media attention to the consequences compared to the popularity of other, more shocking diseases. In truth, humankind is in the middle of several epidemics- Hepatitis C, HIV, Tuberculosis, and others.