RUSH: This is what happens when you make people hysterical about something. I have a sound bite, and then a story. Sanjay Gupta, medical reporter at CNN, Obama’s original choice for Surgeon General, on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday with John King. ‘People out there are criticizing this vaccine. Rush Limbaugh says the government tells me to get this vaccine, for that reason alone I’ll not get it. Anywhere you go, even down in our unit, we’ve had several people get the H1N1, and people say, is this safe?’
GUPTA: There seems to be two reasons people don’t want to get the vaccine. One is that, you know, is it safe? Two is there’s a lot of people out there who still don’t think this is a big deal, this whole H1N1. I think that may have been something that Rush Limbaugh has talked about as well. I did give them to my kids, and I say it that way only because I think at the end of the day that’s what people want to know. I looked at a lot of papers, I looked at the studies. That’s the decision I made.
RUSH: So we’ve got a hysteria out there. It’s been fanned by the media. And what happens when you make people hysterical about something? This is a story from El Dorado Hills, California. A couple, seasoned citizen couple suing their neighbors over cigarette smoke. ‘Conflict with neighbors was the last thing Donna and Richard Ganguet expected to encounter when they moved into a gated community for people age 55 and older. ‘In a senior community, you think we’ll all be compatible and have the same values,’ said Richard Ganguet, a retired El Dorado County sheriff’s deputy. But three years after settling into their single-family home in El Dorado Hills’ Four Seasons development, the Ganguets are suing their next-door neighbor over cigar and cigarette smoke they say wafts into their backyard and house.
‘Because of the smoke, the couple say, they no longer sit on their patio. They also try to sandwich in swims in the side-yard lap pool between their neighbors’ smoking sessions. Doug Smith, attorney for the neighboring homeowner, Florence Solone, said the issue is a trivial one that should be resolved by neighbors talking with each other, not with a lawsuit in El Dorado Superior Court. But disputes between neighbors over secondhand smoke are increasingly making their way into courtrooms and city council chambers.’ This is what happens when you make people hysterical about something. And hysteria is what informs people about the dangers of secondhand smoke. It’s not dangerous. You may not like it but it does not kill you. But everybody thinks it does.