“Don’t eat that! You’ll get trichinosis!”
Is there anyone my age who wasn’t terrified as a child by someone warning them with that frightful admonition not to eat undercooked pork?
And is there anyone who wasn’t subjected to eating very overcooked pork because the adult preparing your dinner believed trichinosis was a genuine threat?
For the record, the rare cases of trichinosis in the United States are mostly the result of eating undercooked game, bear meat, or home-reared pigs. The pork we buy at the store has all been thoroughly inspected and there’s no reason to fear.
Incomplete information, misinformation, and half-truths are taking over the world. How many major hoaxes on the Internet have been debunked in recent years? How many “JFK is alive” conspiracies, how many “Elvis sightings” and how many viruses passed through Facebook must we endure?
And yet, there always seems to be someone willing to pass along some bizarre (and untrue) “news.” This wouldn’t happen if we all practiced common sense and calmly did our homework to check the facts.
And now we’re inundated with doomsayers predicting the collapse of our government, our banking system, the stock market, and so on and so forth. Scaring people is what creates the real problems.
Scared people do stupid things. Fearfully taking your money out of the stock market is what causes the stock market to lose value. Be brave! Stay the course! If nobody sold their stock in media-induced panic, we’d be in lots better shape than if a bunch of sheeple run in mass to grab their money “before it’s all gone.”
Ignorance is at the root of our country’s financial woes today. Ignorance and the irrational fear of trichinosis.