Extra: Was there too much hype about swine flu?

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There was a time, not too long ago, when it sounded like we all were in serious danger.

We were surrounded by dire warnings, stern graphics, serious music - and lots of video of people wearing masks. Cable television breathlessly declared things like "Swine flu panic has gripped the nation!"

But it wasn't until last week that the World Health Organization declared that the swine flu, or H1N1, outbreak had reached pandemic status - and at the same time, health officials characterized the pandemic as moderate.

In hindsight, the warnings in late April of serious health consequences and likely deaths seem like they might have been overblown.

Was it all too much? Americans were urged not to travel to Mexico. Some South American countries placed outright bans on travel there. And here at KARE 11, management placed a giant emergency jug of hand sanitizer in the middle of the newsroom.

But since we first heard of the swine flu, only 167 people in the entire world have died of it. We say only 167, because that is not a big number compared to the 36,000 people killed every year by the normal flu -- in the United States alone.

David Brauer, the media critic for MinnPost, said he thought local news outlets responded well (we didn't tell him about the hand sanitizer), but he wasn't as complimentary of cable news.

"I actually think that the local media, and I include TV and print in this, did a very good job of hewing to what they were getting from official sources," he said.

"If you're watching a lot of cable news, you're making a mistake," Brauer said. "It's probably not a good idea."

But even cable news had to be taking cues from someone -- right?

"When you started to get the alerts and warnings from credible health authorities, it kind of made everybody kick into overdrive," Brauer said.

In those early days, the world's leading health experts did not do much to calm our nerves.

One much-quoted expert, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who heads the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, warned the April developments could be "just the opening punch of the pandemic."

Kris Ehresmann, who is in charge of the infectious disease division at the Minnesota Department of Health, said there had to be a major response.

She said her job requires health officials to respond like fire fighters.

"It would sort of be like saying, if there's a fire, we're not really going to send all the fire trucks on a fire call, because we just want to wait and see if it's really a bad fire," she said.

Once the "fire" didn't look so deadly, Minnesota health officials scaled back. In early May, Ehresmann was one of the first to mute the alarms.

"It's very comforting that the cases that we've seen are mimicking seasonal influenza, are recovering, are doing very well," she said more than a month ago, on May 9.

Today, Ehresmann says the response was the right one.

"It gave us a real-life opportunity to test those plans (and) identify gaps, so that we can now spend the summer working to make sure that, should this come back as a second wave in the fall, that we will be prepared."

In the meantime, mere concern about swine flu has claimed a major victim: Mexico's tourism industry.

Robinson Cook, of Minneapolis, ignored the warnings and left for Mexico on May 1 with his wife.

"It was just us and Mexican families and some Mexican tourists," he said. "Mexico definitely, unfortunately, got hurt by this."

Cook took a camera with him and brought back video showing many people out walking around in public places, and very few of them actually were wearing masks.

"Once we got out of the airport, it was pretty plain to see that the situation was under control," Cook said.

He characterized his trip as a "lesson in not believing the hype."

David Brauer said he was concerned the hype could have a boy-who-cried-wolf effect.

"The danger of hype is that people become conditioned to it, and they do not respond appropriately when there's a real problem," he said.

That concern is one health officials share, especially if the disease gets more severe.

"We would hope then, that based on our credibility in the past, that they would say, 'You know, public health is giving us this message because we need to be on alert for something.' "

For now, officials call the pandemic moderate but warn it could come back worse in the fall.

In Minnesota, the health department reports 302 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus, as of June 17. And there's been one death - a child who the health department says had other "underlyling medical conditions."

Most cases in Minnesota have caused only mild illness.
Robinson Cook said he felt just fine when he returned from his vacation.

"About the only bad thing that happened to me down in Mexico is that I got stung by a jellyfish," he said.

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