Earlier this summer, the World Health Organization (WHO) made quite a show of raising the worldwide swine flu pandemic alert to the highest phase; i.e., to phase 6 on a scale of 1 to 6:
This particular H1N1 strain [swine flu] has not circulated previously in humans. I have conferred with leading influenza experts, virologists, and public health officials… The scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met.
Countries should prepare to see cases, or the further spread of cases, in the near future. Countries where outbreaks appear to have peaked should prepare for a second wave of infection [in the fall].
We are all in this together, and we will all get through this, together.
(Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO in an emergency press briefing on June 11, 2009)
This of course was all the preternaturally hysterical media needed as justification to scare us to death. And of particular note in this respect were reports about schools becoming infectious zones when classes begin in the fall.
Accordingly, we were treated to the spectacle of swine flu paraphernalia competing with traditional school supplies as must haves in back-to-school supplies.
Now comes the inevitable report that all we have to fear about this pandemic is the panic of people acting as if every sniffle were an outbreak of the bubonic plague.
The virus, despite being both novel and infectious, does not seem particularly lethal. This last fact has probably surprised many.
(Dr Senanayake, an infectious diseases specialist)
In fact, of the thousands of cases that have already been reported, this dreaded swine flu is proving to be no more lethal than the common cold. This means, of course, that it should be treated as such; i.e., by washing hands to prevent it, and drinking lots of fluids to treat it.
Which makes me wonder why the US government, and no less a person than President Obama himself, are still admonishing parents to have their kids injected with the regular flu vaccine immediately as well as the swine flu vaccine when it becomes available in mid-October.
Frankly, I’m no doctor, and I don’t play one on this blog, but even I could see the folly in prognosticating that we were facing a pandemic that would make the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed between 20 and 40 million people, seem mild by comparison:
Government officials and news reporters are doing more to cause a panic than I suspect this virus will do to cause a pandemic…
[F]ar too few government officials and reporters are bothering to assure the public that this outbreak is no more deadly than the garden variety flu that kills over 36,000 Americans every year. And, even though it’s a new strain, the fact that over 99% of the people infected worldwide have recovered indicates that this Swine flu is no more likely to grow into a pandemic than SARS or the Avian flu.
[Swine flu causing more panic than pandemic, TIJ, April 28, 2009]
Having said that, I’ve already gotten my seasonal flu shot; but another one for the swine flu?! I don’t think so.
In any event, the WHO’s pandemic alert system is evidently just as meaningless and useless as the USA’s terror alert system….
Related commentaries:
Swine flu causing more panic than pandemic
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