Swine Flu: A little restraint required with the warnings?

The world has been obsessed this week with the outbreak of swine flu, understandable when a new strain of flu appears for which there is no current vaccine and which has the capacity - and I choose my words carefully - to reach pandemic proportions. It does seem to have gone beyond confinement to national borders yet so far there is little evidence of the disease appearing in clusters unrelated to the source in Mexico, though I accept it's early days.



What concerns me though is the reaction, much of it initiated by the world's press who provide their usual mix of valuable reporting and headline irresponsibility. To know where the flu pockets are is useful information, but headlines about 'Killer flu strikes' are not helpful. All influenza is a killer to certain vulnerable sections of the population and a figure was quoted yesterday that 31,000 Americans, for example, die of 'normal' flu every year.






It worried me to see anxious tearful mothers clutching their offspring outside a Torbay school where one child had contracted the disease after a holiday in Mexico. You would have thought that it was the children's last day on earth, rather than them running a mild risk of a type of flu. I do think there needs to be a bit of calming here and reminders that, like any other form of flu, if your child is unlucky enough to catch swine flu then plenty of bed rest, lots of liquids and tender loving care should see them over it in 5-6 days just like any other flu bug. Statistically speaking their chances of coming though it without serious health damage is very high. People need to be warned and advised how to best avoid it, but they also need to be reminded that its not Ebola fever or Typhoid - it's flu.



And Ive just watched a rather silly manifestation of media hype on this issue where dear old BBC Midland News, ever desperate for a news story that doesn't involve cats up trees or a dog with three legs, sent a news crew hotfoot to a Staffordshire school where it was reported that a girl had shown the symptoms of swine flu. Live we went to the scene of this tense, gripping situation where the reporter rather sheepishly admitted that it had just been announced that the kid had a cold!