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I have to admit, I was never so happy to see a car chase on television as I was yesterday.

For those of you who weren’t watching, around 3 PM yesterday, all three cable networks cut away from coverage of Arlen Specter’s decision to switch parties and the seemingly never ending coverage of the Mexican swine flu crisis (oops, not supposed to call it that — more on that later) to follow a stolen tractor trailer race the cops on I-75 outside of Atlanta.

While the blanket coverage of Specter’s decision was understandable, the coverage of the media’s coverage of the situation in Mexico and elsewhere around the world was threatening to overwhelm the Obama administration’s measured and, so far, spot on response to the crisis.

As my other colleagues will point out in greater detail elsewhere, the administration’s response so far to the crisis has been measured and straight from the crisis communications 101 manual.  As far as I can tell, the administration has preached calm and encouraged Americans to be rational about the situation.  The have also reached out to industry to explain how the disease could affect companies that do business in Mexico.  At the same time, they have not tried to underplay the situation with officials pointing out that while everything is good so far (at least in the United States), things could change and more than likely at least one unlucky American will probably die. UPDATE: As of this 6:30 AM ET this morning, there was the first U.S. death — a 23 month old toddler in Texas.

The only thing that I worry about is the administration’s call on Americans, including the media, to stop calling the virus “swine flu.”  At her presser today, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano repeatedly referred to the disease by it technical name — H1N1 — while other officials argued that the name “swine flu” was incorrect since the illness is not carried by pigs.

While accurate, I’m not sure that tactic is going to work.  To mix metaphors, the horse is out of the barn and that term has already slipped into the media’s and public’s vernacular.  Moreover, as Howard Kurtz pointed out in yesterday’s Washington Post, the media has been hyping the swine flu story since Sunday and the wall-to-wall coverage of the disease’s spread, along with actions taken to contain it, has threatened to overwhelm calls for calm.  If the administration wanted to get ahead of the media, it should have started using the term on Sunday.

The other thing that has impressed me so far also has been the lack of politics around dealing with the disease.  Although it is early, so far it appears that most of the politicians at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue are letting the administration deal with the crisis.

But I said most….

Yesterday, USA Today and other outlets picked up a story from the liberal blogosphere trying to proactively put the blame for any deaths at the feet of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) after she led the charge to remove additional monies for pandemic preparedness from President Obama’s stimulus bill.  That effort seemed to go nowhere for several reasons.

• First and foremost, several Democrats, such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also criticized the inclusion and argued that the money should not have been included.  (Collins and others argued that the money should be appropriated through normal channels.)
• Second, even those who criticized the decision to remove the money, such as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), admitted that it would not have had any effect in the current situation.
• Finally, since Sen. Collins was just reelected last year, the opportunity to use this against her won’t happen for another five years.

While this was relatively minor, there is one political decision that should concern the Obama administration AND the Republicans.

That one came from China and Russia.  The governments in Beijing and Moscow announced they were suspending imports of pork from the United States as a result of the ongoing crisis. As public health officials have pointed out, properly cooked, you can’t get swine flu from pork products.  Instead, it appears that the Chinese and Russian governments used a dubious threat to public health to protect domestic producers from U.S. meat exports.  This explains, in large part, the decision to have USTR Ron Kirk at yesterday’s presser.  This in itself is not unusual — governments in Japan and South Korea have used similar tactics in the past.  However, the threat is that other countries will follow these governments and keep the ban long after this situation as passed.  (UPDATE: The Ukraine has also banned pork imports from the United States.)

And that is something to worry about.

For the latest information of swine flu, check out this link that our office in Hong Kong has developed.