The swine flu panic will turn into a national sickie

First, the good news. And we all need good news. According to the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, the UK is no longer at a ‘critical’ level of threat from a terrorist attack. We’ve been downgraded to a ‘substantial’ level of alert against al-Qa’eda or other extremist groups. So we’ve gone from a ‘touch-and-go’, worst-case scenario to a merely ‘significant’ one. However, the bad news is that ‘the Fear’ has been replaced by the Big Bogey Man himself — Mr Piggy.

Swine flu allegedly now poses a cataclysmic and ‘far greater’ immediate threat to our country’s heath and safety than anything else, and so far the government has spent over £100 million stockpiling Tamiflu. At the time of writing, 30 Brits have died as a direct result of the outbreak since 14 June (according to the Department of Health, there are 12,000 deaths per annum from ‘normal’ seasonal flu in this country). Yet we have all been whipped into a state of such mounting hysteria that it surely won’t be long before the country’s workforce grinds to a complete standstill — just as the government, with immaculate timing, jumps ship and fades into recess for the summer.

It may be, as FDR said, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. In which case, the authorities themselves are doing a damned good job of overdosing us on an IV drip of alarm. Don’t get pregnant, watch out at school, don’t go to your doctors spreading the horrible sickness. Nice Mr Johnson, Britain’s most famous former postie, even pushed the Black Spot through the nation’s letter-box last Sunday with the declaration that swine flu now comes ‘above terrorism as a threat to this country’. Which was, when you think about it, a pretty weird thing to say two days after the Muslim convert Andrew Ibrahim had been found guilty of plotting to blow up a shopping centre in Bristol.