In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses a 1999 outbreak of food poisoning in which over one hundred school children became ill after drinking contaminated coca-cola at several schools across Belgium (p. 268-70). Gladwell reveals that upon examination of the culprit coca-cola factory, the contaminants in the CO2 (which gave off a detectable odor, similar to rotten eggs) were found to be present at levels that were not nearly high enough to cause food poisoning, just a detectable unpleasant odor. With this, we are left to assume that a handful of school children must have detected the odor in the coca-cola, probably once they had already drank from it, and began to feel symptoms that merely started as psychological, not physical. Or possibly one child did actually get sick with some sort of food poisoning, probably unrelated to the coca-cola, spreading mass hysteria and psychological symptoms/sickness among hundreds of other school children in the area.

This leads me to the idea that information cascades can be  genuine causes of sickness and hysteria, even in adults. Recently, two Cornell students were diagnosed with Meningitis, a fairly rare and serious condition which can be fatal. Cornell University as an institution began an information cascade with a very serious March 14th  e-mail sent out to all students. The e-mail stated:

A Cornell University student was hospitalized at Cayuga Medical Center (CMC) March 13 with presumed meningococcal meningitis and is in stable condition. He is the second Cornell student to develop the disease in the past week. On March 8, a 21-year-old student was hospitalized at CMC and is currently recovering in a hospital close to her home.

Anyone who attended parties at the following dates and locations, below,  should seek preventive antibiotic from Gannett Health Services or another health care provider, as soon as possible:

- March 6 at 124 Catherine St.

- March 6 at 118 Cook St.

- March 8 at 306 Highland Ave. (Tau Epsilon Phi)

All members of the Cornell community, regardless of attendance at these parties, should be on the alert for the signs and symptoms of meningococcal disease and aware of ways to reduce the risk of infection.

Meningococcal meningitis (not to be confused with viral meningitis) is a serious though rare infectious disease that can cause permanent health problems or death. People are advised to be aware of their health and watch for symptoms of the

illness, which include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, stiff neck, rash, irritability and mental confusion. If you have any of these symptoms, seek immediate medical care.

From my own experience, and using my best guesses, I’m sure that there were many students who began to feel that heavy feeling in your chest when you start to look for symptoms that aren’t really there. I would guess that a large number of students suffering from fever/nausea from spending too many hours in the florida/cancun/mexican sun or nursing a headache from too many drinks the night before began to feel an increase in their symptoms after receiving that dread-filled e-mail. And similarly to the in-class example of  the number of people looking up at the sky correlating with the number of passer-bys who decide to look-up at the sky, I would guess that proximity to the aforementioned locations or people correlates to the level of anxiety and symptoms.  For example, people who came in direct contact with the 2 infected students are at the highest risk not only physically, but mentally as well followed by students who were at the aforementioned three parties/locations on March 6-8 that had not come in contact with the sick students. Students who were already sick with what they thought might be a cold, flu, etc. but were not at the locations were probably feeling very uneasy and also sicker than they had before.

The University’s mentioning of the three locations related to the outbreak was a definite fear factor. Although I can’t know for sure, I’d be willing to bet that the Brothers of Tau Epsilon Phi and the residents at cook and catherine streets might still have that odd feeling in their stomachs, heads, etc that comes with the knowledge that you could possibly be seriously sick. So far there has not been mass hysteria around this issue, but i’m sure gannett has had significantly more calls than usual in the past week, despite the lack of any further meningitis diagnoses. It is easy to see how an information cascade like this one could easily lead to mass illness or hysteria. Information cascades can often lead to things (in this case symptoms) occuring out of “thin air.”