"Newspapers with little better to print or radio shows to talk about, ran the story, and on its gone, anyone remember SARS, when we were all weeks away from armagedon, despite the fact that the disease wasnt that infectious and killed about 2% of the people it did manage to infect.."
Hi Dominic,
I think you may be confusing apples with oranges. SARS, if you remember (and bird flu) took up inordinate amounts of time in the mainstream media, CCD, however, has been merely a whisper around the edges. Whenever such stories reach the public domain it would do well to ask 2 questions:
1. How much air time comparative to potential threat is it taking up?
2. Who does it benefit to air such stories?
In the case of the more recent bird flu, it most obviously provided firstly a great big boost to the revenue of some pharmaceutical companies (particularly the provider of TAMIFLU), and an excuse for some countries (most notably the US) to take initiative to start funding research into the possibilities of H5N1 against those who 'might consider using such as biological weapons' (no prizes who might be most likely to use it there). When I saw this very tenuous link used as an excuse it dumbfounded me. There was also a purported link between Rumsfeld, big shares and TAMIFLU, which coincidentally made him a packet when various western govts started to buy up the drug in response to the 'bird flu' crisis.
It also conveniently drowned out (I think) Blair's last embarassment regarding cash for honours long enough to make a safe exit (I could be wrong on this - there's been so many scandals its hard to keep track
...just looked it up and found this tongueincheek article on it:
http://www.deadbrain.co.uk/news/article_2007_02_06_0304.phpCCD, on the other hand, remains 'in the wings' - not every agricultural industry relies on bees - lots of plants are after all self-pollinating. Knock-on effects of widespread losses of bee populations probably factor into the commercial economic thinking about as much as the knock-on effects of widespread use of potent pesticides do, and the potentially bad effect of too much publicity (and funding to research) of CCD to such economic structures is probably considered much worse.
Therefore, it tends to sit quietly by, relegated by many in the media (and out of it) to offhand comments about there being no proof - a convenient catch-22 when people continue to ignore it.
cheers,
Derek