In a social media feed Monday, I came across a 1979 60 Minutes segment on the propaganda surrounding the 1976 swine flu panic. Many of us had already heard about how the event was reminiscent of today’s COVID-1984 con, but actually watching the segment drives home how striking the parallels between the two disease scares are. Exaggerations of the bugs’ severity, media propaganda and fear-mongering, an effort to vaccinate the whole nation, serious vaccine-coincident side-effects, and an apparent government cover-up of the latter were all elements of the ’76 fiasco just as they epitomize what’s occurring today.
