Missed Diagnoses

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During the recent influenza outbreak, news broadcasters switched into hilarious panic mode. Night after night they talked excitedly in the manner of newscasters in classic Japanese monster movies.

“Swine flu has been sighted outside your town and is headed your way! It will destroy you and your family! You must evacuate at once!”

From the sound of it, we should have been running in panic down the streets while a sixty-foot virus stomped our homes into rubble. The only thing missing was a scientist in a white lab coat and black plastic glasses telling us his secret invention was the key to defeating Swine Flu, but that he couldn’t use it because it was too powerful for mankind to possess.

Things got even stranger when the Pork Producers lobby got involved and asked the TV anchors to drop the phrase “Swine Flu” in favor of the more politically-correct “H1N1” virus. This had the effect of making the news sound like the world’s stupidest bingo game. “H1N1. That’s H1N1.”

“Bingo!”

With such over-the-top reporting, it was tempting to take the media down a peg or two by giving it an even sillier name. Imagine Brian Williams staring meaningfully into the camera and saying, “Today in East Elbow, Indiana there were more reports of the Hiney Virus.”

I wouldn’t mind the news media getting all wound up if they’d just get wound up about the things that interest me; like all of the imaginary diseases that have very real consequences. For example, I myself am a sufferer of “Hibernative Naptosis”.

Hibernative Naptosis tends to strike people in public places like meetings, church, and performances by the Metropolitan Opera. The early symptoms are a loss of interest in the victim’s surroundings and a sudden weight gain in the eyelids. Attacks are triggered by speakers who maintain a consistently even pitch and tone of delivery while spewing out complicated and tedious information such as the exact sequence of base pairs on the twenty-sixth human chromosome. Once it finishes with the eyelids, the virus moves on to the muscles of the face and neck causing the head to snap forward and drool to come out of the mouth. Like many diseases, Hibernative Naptosis attacks the very young and the very old. Infants and toddlers are particularly susceptible until they reach the age of two at which point the disease switches itself off and they forgo regular sleep until late adolescence. Likewise, the disease afflicts older individuals who frequently fall asleep while watching sporting events, newscasts, and at the table during especially long family dinners.

Of course, since this disease is wholly made-up, you’ll never hear Katie Couric talking about it. You also won’t ever hear her talking about another serious scourge; Teenage Dropsy.

This is a condition which afflicts approximately one out of every one adolescent males. (It may affect females as well, but for legal reasons my research pool is limited to my own two personal sons.) Under the influence of gravity (such as might be found in any reasonably well-equipped modern home) my sons are unable to hang on to any item for the time necessary to carry it up to their rooms. Beginning at the door and continuing throughout the house, they leave evidence of their presence. I’m not talking about the kind of subtle, hard-to-spot-without-a-UV-light evidence that turns a fifteen-minute crime story into an hour-long episode of CSI: Duluth. I’m talking about the kind of evidence that, when you trip over it, is likely to break a toe, foot, or leg; evidence that is nearly large enough to count as furniture.

Not only does Teenage Dropsy affect the muscles of the hands and arms, it also causes temporary blindness. Let’s say you “politely” — meaning in a volume somewhat less than might be experienced in the front row of a heavy-metal concert — inform your teen that you would very much appreciate it if they could bestir themselves to pick up one or two of the ten thousand things they dropped. They’ll stare right at the object and say, “I don’t see anything.” Like Annie Sullivan leading Helen Keller you can put their hands right on the pile of junk and they’ll still insist it isn’t there. Sadly, the only cure for this is time. Eventually, some time after they have teenagers of their own, their vision will clear and they’ll understand what you were talking about all those years ago.

Another disorder common to the young is Procrastinitus. This has the effect of distorting the victim’s time sense. While a healthy individual might look at the calendar and realize that they only have five days to complete a five-day project, a Procrastinitus suffer in the same situation will believe they have “plenty of time”. Paralyzed by their inability to perceive the passage of time, they will continue to believe they have plenty of time even as the deadline blasts past them like a NASCAR racer on the final lap. The worst feature of Procrastinitus is that it can afflict not only an individual, but entire groups including committees, cross-functional work teams, and governments. Modern scientists believe that Atlantis wasn’t destroyed, it simply sank after the Auxiliary Planning Committee in Charge of Flood Control contracted Procrastinitus and never got around to creating an agenda for the first pre-planning meeting.

When the Swine Flu outbreak started, thousands of health care professionals mobilized, companies dusted off contingency plans and updated them, surgical mask manufacturers ramped up production and rolled out their new designer-label fashion lines, and my e-mail box was stuffed with spam offering me discounts on Tamiflu. I wish somebody would take the imaginary diseases that seriously. I could really use something to keep me awake in meetings or help my children see the messes they create. I could be the one to start that research…if only I hadn’t caught a bad case of Procrastinitus.

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Tags: health, media, medicine, science, swine flu