A post in this week's Ad Contrarian was devoted to the knee-jerk psychopandemic that is swine flu.
I think we may all be a little sick.
I used to write fundraising letters for a living. We tried it all: stories about sick children, pictures of scrawny dying babies, mothers with AIDS, towns wiped out by war, child soldiers (some who passed initiation by shooting their parents), dump scroungers, homeless families, you name it. Good lord, what we didn't try to get a rise (and a cheque) out of people. What the clients didn't do to get their cause in the news. Sometimes billboards went up. Sometimes a news conference got media attention. But mostly it was same-old, same-old: the same group of donors giving the same money. And we fought to keep them giving.
So, please, a reality check:
* Influenza--plain, old flu--kills up to 500,000 people around the world every year.
* Over 1 million people die from malaria every year.
* 540 people die of measles each and every day.
* And, my personal favourite, 9.2 million children die EVERY YEAR (that's over 25,000 A DAY) before they reach their 5th birthday. Mostly from preventable disease.
So far, there have been 615 confirmed cases of Influenza A(H1N1)--the fancy new name for swine flu--and 16 deaths. But if we held a fundraiser today, I'd eat my hat if we didn't raise millions for each and every one of those cases.
All we need is a few measly dollars a day to protect dying children. What, oh what can we do--I beg you, truly--to get this kind of coverage for the kids dying of stuff we've had vaccines against for years?
Lord help us all.
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