Media Registers Bad Swine Flu Domain — Old School

A glimmer of hope from old school media, but a painful reminder of how lost they are.

The Austin American-Statesman, a Cox-owned newspaper, has done a decent job with its online presence. Just two days ago it made a bold move — registering a separate domain name for a portal regarding swine flu. It even picked up a pretty good keyword swineflucare…

.Net.

Seriously? Yes, it created a web site at SwineFluCare.NET. SwineFluCare.com was registered on April 25, so when the Austin American-Statesman decided to register a domain on April 27 it went with the .net version.

They would have been better off registering a longer domain in .com than going with this name in .net.

Oh well.

Meanwhile, the media continues to pull off as much “freak out” as it can regarding the virus. Schools are closing in Texas and following school activities are canceled. I think this is overkill. Send the sick kids home, but there’s no reason to cancel school right now. One school in Austin had a “probable” case of swine flu, so it decided to shut down until May 11. Another school had some kids who just got back from a trip to Mexico, so it canceled school. I guess it’s an excuse for some time off.

For a reality check, here’s what a story in the Los Angeles Times today has to say:

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.