Swine Flu Panic

David

To be fair, I'd prefer a level of vigilance that turns out to be an over reaction, than a blase dismissal that turns out to be fatal....

Fay Allinson

I asked my doctor, how do I protect myself from Swine Flu he said to 'ignore all the bloody hype'good advice from a top specialist.

egh

Good news the hospitals are sending people home.

At least the genocide isn't in full swing: or perhaps the Pig Plague isn't lethal enough yet to warrant declarations of 'uncontrollable infection' on the wards.

egh

Good news the hospitals are sending people home.

At least the genocide isn't in full swing: or perhaps the Pig Plague isn't lethal enough yet to warrant declarations of 'uncontrollable infection' on the wards.

[Apologies if this post duplicates - the first didn't seem to go through]

Paul T Horgan

When did we stop having epidemics and start having pandemics?

'Pandemic' has a subliminal message, if you remove the 'dem' from it. If you do the same with 'epidemic', you end up with Ben-Hur.

Ross

This is a disappointing post. The media (of which you are of course a member) seem capable of only 2 narratives when it comes to potential pandemics: 1) the sky is falling, hide your loved ones in the cellar; or 2) the media bogeymen have turned a non-story into mass panic. Both narratives are simplistic and unhelpful. Narrative 1, when the world does not end, logically produces narrative 2, which as we see is already in full swing. Much more useful would be reasoned analysis of the situation, considering the potential threat in addition to the realized threat. The fact that we have been lucky enough to avoid a truly deadly outcome does not mean that the risk should have been ignored or now scorned. If the public comes away from this nonplussed at the potential dangers of a flu pandemic, it will make preparation more difficult to promote, and will make a truly dangerous outbreak (such as a potential H5N1 crossover) all the worse when it comes.

Susan Hill

Around 50,000 people die in the USA alone every year from 'normal' flu and a lot do here too. Nobody has got this thing into proportion.

Verity

The media in Britain and other countries have announced that The Mexican Government has "closed down the country" for five days.

Well, yeah. It's the Cinco de Mayo. It always closes down for five days. From the first to the fifth. The country more or less, bar supermarkets and gas stations and lots of other things, closes down. It has nothing to do with notional "swine flu". It's a giant national holiday.

Mexico City - population around 22m, had around 1200 people who might have had swine flu. What kind of statistics are those ... ?

Those people would have been people from remote regions who came to Mexico City because they thought there were jobs there, or perhaps illegals from Central America ... sneezing all over each other and too ignorant to approach a government/social security hospital because they'd never paid in. No clinic or hospital - public or private - or doctor's office, in Mexico, would have turned them away. But they wouldn't have known that.

The ill-informed comment that is going on in Britain is too self-important for words. And how many die from normal flu in Britain each year? Around 20,000? This is all a big stitch up with the ghastly WHO and the ghastly Chan.