By Nan King
Panic, anxiety, scaremongering, conspiracies… but just a few months on, and swine flu seems to have been all but forgotten. Whilst we are much more likely to die of cancer or heart disease than we are of swine flu or terrorism, the latter two seem much more chilling. In this short podcast, I talk to experts on both sides of the pond, and ask if our emotional reaction to disease influences its spread.
Nice work. You might also be interested in this story about how, in a pandemic climate, a simple sneeze can make people more worried about completely unrelated threats like heart attacks, crime and accidents, and even affect our political attitudes.