Lyndsay Moss: Never mind 'hype', swine flu remains a very real danger to health of the world

Published on Monday 25 May 2009 18:59

In that time, more than 12,000 cases of infection by the virus – more politely referred to as H1N1 by sensitive types, usually politicians – have been diagnosed around the world. This includes more than 130 cases in the UK.

And while more than 80 deaths have been linked to swine flu so far, most cases outside Mexico appear to have been mild, and patients have recovered none the worse for wear.

Undoubtedly, the fact that no-one in the UK has died from H1N1 has made us somewhat blas about the virus.

And of course, the usual kind of jokes have been circulating by e-mail. You know the ones I'm talking about – "I called the swine flu helpline, but all I got was crackling," or "Swine flu's not all that bad – it only lasts a weeeeek," etc.

Would this have happened so widely if the ladies of Morningside or Kelvinside were dropping like flies from an illness with such an undignified name?

Crucially, we have not yet reached the stage where a pandemic is declared. Whether or not we will reach that stage, nobody yet knows, but scientists are keen to point out that, based on past experience, the virus could lay low for the summer and come back with a vengeance in the winter months.

So it is right that the Scottish Government and governments around the world have taken the pandemic threat seriously. And equally right is the fact that the media have reported so thoroughly the global response.

Given this, it is somewhat galling when you turn on the TV to find pieces debating whether the media have over-hyped the threat of a swine flu pandemic.

And don't you just love it when TV people talk about "the media" as if it is something that has nothing to do with them. If you ever hear someone on TV talking about "the media", they will usually be referring to newspapers.

So, here we are: the TV news has assembled a panel of the "experts" that producers usually wheel out to discuss anything from reality television to geopolitics. At least one of them is usually an oily PR type.

There follows thinly veiled criticism of what has, essentially, been newspaper reporting on what the world's top scientists, public health experts and politicians have been saying about swine flu and the potential for a pandemic.

Did newspapers make up the fact that the World Health Organisation raised its pandemic threat level to five – just one stage short of full-blown, batten-down-the-hatches pandemic? No.

Neither did they invent the fact that this virus has the potential to mutate and become more severe, or that the threat is deemed serious enough that efforts to produce a vaccine have already started.

If anyone has over-hyped this virus, it is the experts and governments who have pulled out all the stops to try to protect the public from the potential of a deadly illness. Perhaps there is a difference between over-hyping and simply trying to prepare for something that cannot be predicted.

As far as this virus is concerned, we will be playing a waiting game for some time yet. Flu pandemics do not work to a neat little timetable. If they did, perhaps all the experts would not be quite so worried.

For as long as I have been writing about health, I have been to briefings about planning for a flu pandemic. We have been told repeatedly that it was "a case of when and not if" one would arrive. We were also led to believe that birds, rather than pigs, would be the source of a virus that would turn into a pandemic strain.

As you can see, these things are not 100 per cent predictable, and the threat from bird flu remains the same as it always has. A worst-case scenario could be that deadly bird flu mixes with swine flu – less deadly but with more of an ability to spread – to create a killer strain we have no hope of containing as we have done this far.

It is right that we hope for the best but expect the worst. We have certainly not heard the last of this correctly hyped virus.