Swine Flu – Fiasco Or Fraud?

Christmas is the time for families to remember the Good News, and for politicians to bury the bad news. We’re happy to follow this tradition, by being the very first content provider to announce the official ending of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. We do this with absolute confidence, following a thorough analysis of recent medical reports and national sickness statistics. At the start of the year the country was led to anticipate a death toll similar to that caused by the 1918 global flu pandemic. According to an official warning: ‘The loss of human life even in a mild pandemic will be devastating.’ In preparation for this expected carnage, Whitehall contacted coffin makers to make sure they could cope with the surge of demand, and introduced contingency plans for crematoria to operate seven days a week. Now we know that the risk was grossly exaggerated.

According to a recent statement by Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, the swine flu pandemic has been ‘considerably less lethal’ than feared with a death rate lower than a tenth of one per cent. This means that we haven’t been faced with a pandemic, which the World Health Organization originally defined as a disease causing ‘enormous numbers of deaths and illness’. This wording was changed in May 2009, when it was clear that the H1N1 infection was mild and would not be particularly life threatening, so that governments around the world could continue using the disturbing word ‘pandemic’ to describe the outbreak.

The resultant over reaction caused needless panic and an enormous waste of taxpayer’s money. One Middlesborough hospital set aside an entire ward for the isolation and treatment of patients with suspected swine flu. Three months later the ward had admitted just 28 patients, only two of whom were found to be suffering from H1N1 infection when throat swabs were taken. The truth is that the disease has proved to be less virulent that the normal outbreaks of seasonal flu. In New Zealand only seventeen flu-related deaths have been recorded so far this year. This compares with the normal annual tally of about four hundred fatalities from seasonal flu. This is probably because infection with this year’s relatively mild H1N1 strain has provided immunity against the normal, range of seasonal flu germs. This is the view of Ron Law, a New Zealand virus expert, who argues that exposure to swine flu may have saved 383 lives in New Zealand, ‘which makes it more effective than any flu vaccine.’ Some virologists go a step further, suggesting that flu virus strains are getting milder in an attempt to improve their survival chances. This is a wise evolutionary choice, for if victims are killed, or put to bed for several days, they have less chance or transmitting the virus.

So don’t let the fear of catching swine flu spoil your Xmas celebrations. Celebrate with the crowds. Ignore the advice of Debrett, the arbiters of court etiquette, who suggests that this Christmas we should give up mouth-to-mouth kissing under the mistletoe. Don’t be a hypochondriac. Laughter, and the close company of family and friends, are known to save more lives than germs will kill. Unless you have a compromised immune system, your best life style choice is to enjoy the conviviality of the festive season. Let the fun and games proceed as usual. Don’t forget that this is a pagan as well as a religious festival. It’s the winter solstice, a time to dance, feast and frolic, and this can’t be done without close human contact.

However, while it’s high jinks and jollity for the next few days, we shouldn’t forget three vital lessons which must be learned from this year’s swine flu fracas. The first is the importance of building a strong personal immune system. Blood tests taken this summer revealed that about a third of children had already developed antibodies against the H1N1 virus, showing that they’d met, and successfully coped, with the infection without feeling ill or showing any outward signs of the disease. This particular viral strain has been around for at least thirteen years, which may explain why so few elderly people have fallen victim to swine flu this year, because they’ve already acquired a natural immunity. (Throughout the coming year we’ll be offering advice on how to build a strong immune system.)

The second lesson is that we must place more reliance on past experience. There was an H1N1 outbreak in America in 1976 which was hopelessly bungled by Gerald Ford’s administration, and as a result is now referred to as ‘the swine flu fiasco’? A national immunization campaign was introduced which had to be cancelled after a few months when it was found that the virus had killed only one person, while the side effects of the vaccine had caused twenty-five deaths. Are we doomed to repeat this error? The third, and most important, lesson is that governments should not take on the responsibility of handling disease outbreaks.

This should be left to doctors with specialist knowledge of public health care. Earlier this year we made this recommendation in a posting entitled ‘Swine flu: to be or not to be?’ Those of you who read it, and it’s still in the archive, will probably remember that we accused successive British governments of showing a total inability to comprehend and manage outbreaks of infectious diseases, as witness their handling of the vCJD ‘mad cow’ disease and the SARS coronavirus outbreak. ‘Now we’re faced with the threat of a pandemic of H1N1 swine flu, and the government is reacting once again with the mindless frenzy of a headless chicken,’ we wrote. We looked back to the US outbreak in 1976, which ended several years later when the US Secretary of Health was forced to make a public apology, admitting that as a layman he’d found enormous difficulty in making ‘sound, balanced judgments about complex, scientifically-based public health issues.’ This in future should never be part of the government remit.

As a result of this bungling the UK government is now left with enormous stock piles of swine flu vaccines, and anti-viral agents like Tamiflu and Pandemrix, to tackle a disease which has virtually burnt itself out. It’s also set aside a vast advertising budget to encourage us to stand in line to take our jabs. Whether or not we accept this treatment is a matter of personal choice. In my case, I’ll be following the advice of the president of the German College of General Practitioners and Family Physicians, who thinks that these pharmaceutical products have not been adequately tested. As a result he’ll not be taking the vaccine and anti-viral agents himself, and has advised German doctors not to give them to their patients, on the grounds that the potential risks outweigh the benefits. So let’s have a care-free Christmas, but learn from our mistakes, take steps to strengthen our immune systems, and put pressure on the government to stop meddling in public health affairs.

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