S. T. Karnick makes an interesting point in the context of an essay on the new popularity of zombies:
Both the zombie appeal and the swine flu fears are caused by two things: the news media’s increasing use of scare tactics in trying to lure audiences, and the socialists’ continuous use of fearmongering to press for political power. In their neverending quest to wrest more power by creating what H. L. Mencken correctly characterized as an endless series of hobgoblins requiring a socialist elite’s powers to destroy, the socialists and their media satraps continually raise fears of everything conceivable:
medical and public-health scares from Alar in apples to Gulf War Syndrome to Asian flu to swine flu
all-out nuclear war it never happened because both sides indeed knew it would be catastrophic and wouldn’t get them what they wanted