The rumour spread with remarkable speed this morning, but Helen Branswell was just as fast: Internet rumours of bird flu case in Rimouski, Que., are "totally untrue." Excerpt:
The power of the Internet rumour mill slammed up against a hospital in Rimouski, Que., on Wednesday, leaving doctors and administrators bewildered by claims they were treating a boy gravely ill with H5N1 avian flu.
If he had existed, the nine-year-old with pneumonia would have been North America's first human case of H5N1 flu. It also would have ignited continental concern over how a child could have come in contact with a virus not yet found in North America.
If he had existed.
"This is totally untrue. There is no case of respiratory illness in any children right now in the hospital. No cases at all," said Dr. Patrick Dolce, head of microbiology for the hospital in Rimouski, called the Centre de sante et services sociaux de Rimouski-Neigette.
Just as Orson Welles scared radio listeners with his 1930s invasion from Mars, someone started a silly rumour and the Internet amplified it. And in both cases, the audience was primed for it.
In 1938 the whole world was jumpy at the thought of a new world war. An invasion from Mars was bizarre, yet close enough to the anticipated war to trigger panic in some listeners.
Today, we Flublogians have been anticipating a pandemic for months or years, but I would bet that the people who accepted the rumour and passed it on were those with just a little knowledge. Anyone knowing the details of the spread of H5N1 over the past year, would have dismissed Rimouski as an utterly unlikely launching pad for human H5N1 in the western hemisphere.
But some folks enjoy releasing computer viruses into the Internet, and others enjoy passing along hoax warnings about bogus viruses. No doubt we'll get a few idiots who will think it's a riot to concoct a more plausible rumour: Six nurses with H5N1 in Sulianti Saroso Hospital, for example. That would shake up a lot of us.
The Rimouski rumour has actually done us a favour. It's reminded us that when anxiety levels are high, and real information levels are low, it's easy to jump at every false alarm. The more believably scary the report, the more confirmation we should demand of it.
