Dr. Richard Schabas, chief medical officer of health for Hastings and Prince Edward Counties in eastern Ontario, said the H1N1 influenza outbreak needs to be put into proper perspective.

About 200,000 people die in Canada every year from all causes combined, including about 4,000 from seasonal flu.

"By the time all the dust has settled on H1N1, somewhere between 200 and 300 people will have died in this country," Schabas said Thursday during a panel on media coverage of H1N1 on CBC-TV's The National.

Schabas criticized the media for not trying to put the story into perspective, and for being "a little too easy to spin sometimes" by public health officials.

"I'm not letting the media off the hook totally, but I think the real villains of the piece here have been those public health officials who have consistently overplayed and overstated the importance of what is happening," he said.

"By the time all is said and done, this is not a major public health event, but you'd never know that from what some people are saying."

My beef with the media again is that they tend to have a POV that makes us all helpless.

First of all there is the context - It's usually "Drama" - the sky is falling or the opposite - "Unemployment is a lagging indicator" There is rarely the real context - that in the case of Swine Flu the risks of death are very small as shown by its cycle south of the equator.

Secondly there are the headlines with no context at all - Lots of vaccine - buying the spin. Then No vaccine!

Thirdly - there is no useful advice about what you do if you have the flu - how can you best prepare etc

Lastly - no real examination about what the community can do - how will we support parents etc

The result? People either panic and or switch off.

What is going on in the editors minds? No wonder traditional media is dying. It's not just the web etc, it's this focus on the simplistic and the use of fear. I think it is shameful.