Swine flu and the unneccessary panic.

I think that people need to get a reality check about the possible pandemic of H1N1 influenza commonly called swine flu. You see, like most of these things it is really not that scary.

The problem is that most people don't know the difference between the common cold and flu. A bad cold can lay you up quite badly. But flu will lay you up badly. And thats any type of flu not just one of the celebrity mutant strains that grab the headlines.

It was summed up nicely by a doctor on radio 2 this morning. He said that when patients walk into his office and say they have flu he tells them that if they had then they wouldn't have been able to climb out of bed.

This lack of understanding means that a headline saying that such and such a flu has killed 20 people somewhere causes panic. Afterall flu doesn't usually kill does it?

Well actually yes it does. Regular seasonal flu kills around 500,000 people a year in a good year. So on the face of it only 20 odd confirmed deaths is just nothing. The issue here is the ease of transmission. And even that doesn't seem to be too bad. In the UK there are now 5 confirmed (but all mild) cases and every single one of them has been to mexico recently. As no cases have been confirmed where the virus has been transfered in the UK. Precautionary treatment of people who might have been exposed is underway to minimise the chances of a spread.

H1N1 is one of the strains the which many people have a natural immunity. It is also easily treatable with the antiviral drugs being stockpiled by governments. This makes it vary different to H5N1 bird flu which would not have been so easy to treat. But public concern about the latter has enabled goverenments to establish robust plans which are now swinging into action.

Note here that I'm not acusing the government of panicing. Indeed I think that the state responses have been very well executed thus far. Ministers are saying that britain is the best prepared state in the world to deal with a major outbreak. And, unlike the similar claims made about the economy, the figures seem to square with this. So well done Alan Johnson and department, thus far you seem to be on top of this one.