Listening to the radio this morning to reporters visiting the epicenter of the Haitian quake, I heard locals complaining that no one had come to help them. Locals said they need food, water, and shelter; when rains come they will get cold. The reporters, however, seemed obsessed with noting that locals need medicine. They also focused on local efforts to dig out and bury their dead.
Given their desperate need for food, water, and shelter, it seems unlikely to me that medicine is such a priority. Furthermore, experts say, dead bodies are just not a problem:
Corpses do not represent a public health threat. When death is due to the initial impact of the event and not because of disease, dead bodies have not been associated with outbreaks.
I’m not sure to what extent we are seeing a bias in Haitians, in the reporters, or in their US audience. But surely epicenter Haitians have more important worries than medicine and dead bodies.
Added: The contrast between the oh so visible US concern and US planes flying around Haiti with loudspeakers warning locals not to try to boat it to the US is quite striking. Clearly at some level US folks realize they could help Haitians most by letting them immigrate. If we (thought we) cared less and were instead eager to gain migrant farm workers and household servants, we might end up helping Haitians more.
Maybe, just maybe, the death of friends and relatives is disturbing at a deeply fundamental level. Maybe, just maybe, this overwhelming reaction of loss is magnified to inhuman levels when these deaths are entering your deepest and oldest brain ALL DAY LONG. Maybe, just maybe, these reporters are empathizing with the locals at a deep level, reflecting accurately their situation, emotional as it inescapably is.
You're probably right, and we should be understanding, but why should this mean we can't talk about factual accuracy at the same time?
The content and leaning of this blog is so overwhelmingly and embarrassingly privileged and entitled and removed.
That doesn't mean they aren't sometimes true.
Maybe, just maybe, the death of friends and relatives is disturbing at a deeply fundamental level. Maybe, just maybe, this overwhelming reaction of loss is magnified to inhuman levels when these deaths are entering your deepest and oldest brain ALL DAY LONG. Maybe, just maybe, these reporters are empathizing with the locals at a deep level, reflecting accurately their situation, emotional as it inescapably is.
The content and leaning of this blog is so overwhelmingly and embarrassingly privileged and entitled and removed.
Maybe just maybe, it is really difficult to accumulate, prepare, and distribute 3 million meals three times a day across a nation with no stable infrastructure of any kind.
Are you in Haiti? Are you working in a significant way to directly effect the effective feeding of 9 million meals a day? Please!
Randall