Insights

<p>In covering the current swine flu outbreak, the ethnic media in the United States has been ahead of the curve on some stories the mainstream media is just picking up, such as a growing <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-f…; against Mexicans. </p>

<p>Father William Cleary helped set up a Catholic parish in Satellite Town, one of the growing suburbs of Lagos, Nigeria, in 1987. The 73-year-old served there until July 2008 and saw the country undergo massive societal, cultural and political changes while struggling to overcome stubborn public health threats from poor sanitation, a malarial climate and a reluctance to face head-on the threat of <a href="http://www.apin.harvard.edu/AIDS_in_Nigeria.html">AIDS</a>.</p&gt;

<p>President Barack Obama is searching for a new surgeon general. He might consider screening the resumes of doctors a little lower in the federal ranks. </p>

<p>It didn't take long, did it? Already, unscrupulous vendors are hawking products to "cure" or "prevent" swine flu. Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission issued an <a href="http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2009/NEW02007.html">alert</a&gt; warning about such scams. And that's not all - some swine flu emails actually <a href="http://blogs.usatoday.com/technologylive/2009/04/scam-swine-flu-emails-… viruses</a> that can infect your computer or steal your personal data. The Washington Post blogs on the problem <a href="/">here</a>. </p>

<p>There's plenty of <a href="http://www.twitter.com/">Twitter</a&gt; traffic on swine flu right now, and much of it is hysterical fearmongering, a <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103562240">story</…; in itself. However, if you check out <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23swineflu">#swineflu</a&gt; on Twitter, amid the twaddle you'll see some interesting real-time posts about surgical masks on janitors at the Atlanta airport, a cruise line's decision to avoid Mexican ports in favor of Nicaraguan ones, and rumors about the U.S.

<p>The World Health Organization has just <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g-G1kSAM9yaH00eBrXD2S…; its for swine flu pandemic alert level to Level 5, its second highest, signaling that a global pandemic is imminent. </p>

<p>If you're covering the swine flu outbreak, you should make time for a free online class offered by the Centers for Disease Control on Thursday from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST. </p>

<p>State, local and national agencies were supposed to be prepared for this swine flu outbreak. After September 11^th, money started flowing to law enforcement agencies and public health departments to help them gear up specifically for a chemical or biological threat.</p><p>So how was that money spent?</p><p>On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, my colleague here at Center for Health Journalism Digital, Barbara Feder Ostrov, wrote a great piece for the San Jose Mercury News that detailed how money in the San Jose area was being spent. </p>

<p>The swine flu scare in the United States may have started with just two Southern California children, but it intensified with the discovery ofmore than two dozeninfected students at a New York City school. St. Francis Preparatory Schoolreported that 100 students had gone on a trip to Mexico recently and that, since the trip, 28 students at the school had come down with symptoms of swine flu. </p>