When I grew up, “superbug” was a colloquial term used as shorthand for certain Volkswagen cars. Not any more. Now we have a deadly threat considered worse than SARS, AIDS and Bird Flu. The invasion of the Superbugs has moved from the science fiction channel to page one. It is a spectre that may yet define our era.
Especially frightening is that we only learned of this deadly epidemic involving a horrific flesh-eating disease two years after its serial killing spree began. Nineteen thousand people dead, may be more, and ’nobody knew nothin.’ No doubt they didn’t want to alarm us.
More disturbing is that all these people died were in hospitals and nursing homes, places where they expected to get care and cures---not contract a life ending superbug.
And this is not the only medical super problem. Doctor Paul Farmer warned in l999 of the spread of multidrug-resistant TB in the prisons of the former Soviet Union. Now this is a major problem in Africa. Did you know that “One-third of the world's population, 1.7 billion people, have TB in Latent form; a person infected with the organism has a 10 percent risk of developing active TB sometime in his or her life.”
Has the concept of the “superbug” become a metaphor for our times, a sign that our institutions set up to solve problems are making them worse, and that our press is hopelessly behind in telling us about other superbugs and calamities threatening our world?
A superbug of big bully WARITIS seems endemic in high places where talk of World War 3 and attacking Iran follows the same pattern from the Iraq playbook of well-orchestrated message points A compliant media seems willing to disseminate as if there are no dots to connect or context to offer.
Last Sunday, a 60 Minutes report showed millions of acres burning in the American West. Firefighters said these forest fires have been getting worse for ten years
Why are we only finding out about the ‘superbug” of forest destruction now?
Oil is another issue. For years, the Administration scoffed at suggestions that the Iraq war was motivated by the need to control more oil reserves. The media scoffed at critics who chanted “no blood for oil” while politicians were in denial. And then, none other than former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan asserted that oil was always a main motivator. At that, the media and the government went silent as if attacked by a superbug of amnesia.
Ditto for the suggestion that oil production was peaking. Nonsense said the oil companies when the suggestion was made. They seemed gripped by a superbug of certainty. The Peak Oil argument was dismissed by insiders as doom and gloom conspiracy speculation. And then, just this week, the Guardian cited a new report to confirm a fear that had repeatedly been dismissed by the cognoscenti:
“World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report that also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.”
Let’s blame this information lag on the superbug of deception.
An Inconvenient Truth, the award-winning film featuring the award-winning politician Al Gore showed us icebergs melting. Why did it take an independent documentary to graphically show us the “superbug of “climate change? Where was the news media? Perhaps “reporting” on Britney or OJ Simpson?
In 2004 and earlier, the wizards of Wall Street started underwriting subprime loans and SIVS—Structured Investment Vehicles—to transfer billions of dollars from poorer Americans to wealthier ones.
A superbug of greed invaded the world of finance.
Few journalists warned of the danger to the borrowers who are now facing foreclosures by the tens of thousands. The regulators and ratings agencies and commissars of business ethics were silent. The media pumped up the myth of a buouyant economy rather than expose the scams that would in a few short years unravel the markets and deepen inequality.
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