Swine Flu? Oh Really!

We have put up with stories about swine flu for over six months and now the latest one is that the return to school of our children is going to trigger the renewal of the outbreak. As soon as the first new case is reported there will be renewed calls to close the schools, send the children home, isolate anyone suspected of having the disease and fill ourselves with vaccine at the first possible indication of symptoms.

When the first stories of this outbreak hit the press I found it difficult to take them seriously at all in the wake of the SARS and avian flu debacles that had both shown how readily the media could manipulate us, and their constant appetite to do so.

At first I thought that the swan that had apparently died of avian flue in Scotland had landed on a pig and the swan, seeing the pig leaning in close to hear its last words had gathered its remaining strength and triumphantly kissed the pig. Thus the avian variety had become porcine.

But no, it soon became evident that amorous animals were not the cause at all, no this was real. The story that I gathered from the early reports of the outbreak were that it came from Mexico city where twenty four cases had been reported and it was these reports that triggered the worldwide scare. I recall thinking at the time that in a city of six million people where two million of them live below the poverty line without clean water, homes or access to basic medical care, how did they know that twenty four people had flu, and why would they care if they had?

I began to suspect that the whole thing came from a story sent in by a journalist who had just come back from a vacation in Mexico and wanted to make some money to pay for his holiday.

Then the first report came in of two cases in the UK. A Scottish couple had been admitted to hospital with “Flu like ” symptoms, The media were ecstatic, Pig flu is here! Pig flu is here! We told you so! We told you so!

Then we heard an interview on the radio with a very puzzled Mexican Doctor who said that he was having difficulty understanding how the couple had got the same kind of flu because the reported outbreak was in Mexico city, and the couple had been on holiday in Cancun, more than six hundred miles away.

The day after these first reported cases in the UK we heard another interview with a different Mexican doctor as journalists frantically looked for something new to say. This time the reporter called the outbreak Swine flu and the doctor stopped him, saying that the outbreak in Mexico city was H1N1, which is not Swine flu, just a normal variant of the ordinary flu that we get every year. But the reporter was not to be denied and ploughed on regardless saying, “Never mind that, how many new cases are there?” Never let the facts get in the way of a good story

.In the ensuing six months we had to suffer new outbreaks of indignation every time a new case was reported, we watched as the drug companies geared up for an international spending spree on vaccines and we looked on in horror as school after school was closed because someone had caught the flu.

Now that the drug companies have had time to stock pile the huge amounts of vaccine that it is assumed we will need they are predicting a return to the level of hysteria that was first generated six months ago, because they now have enough vaccine to deal with it!

What has actually happened in those six months? In the UK in the last six months less than 30 people have died who were thought to have swine (H1N1) flu. They did not die from the flu but died because they were very ill anyway or had conditions that the flu may have aggravated.

Compare that with the five to eight thousand who die every year in the UK from existing conditions, worsened by ordinary flu, and you realise how out of proportion the reaction to this outbreak really is.

The only thing that makes this flu seem worse is the media coverage started by irresponsible journalists who want to frighten people to increase the impact of their story and continued by those who have a vested interest in perpetuating the scare.

If you catch H1N1 there is no reason to deal with it any differently from any other flu virus with the possible exception that you will probably feel less ill if you don’t read the nonsense that they print about it in the papers.

And if you feel that you are missing out because the flu you have got is not a special kind of flu after all, Try kissing a pig, that might work.