In November 2001 I said:
We’re all worrying about anthrax, lasser fever, the dreaded ebola and of course plague – but are these the most effective weapons against us? No. Now if I was an evil middle-eastern dictator or faction, I would choose a different weapon – ‘flu. After WW1 flu wiped out millions of people across the world in just 18 months. It wiped out 60% of the Alaskan eskimo population in 45 days. It took one month to cross the Atlantic. And where did it start?
America.
Oh dear.
Now, back then, shortly after the World Trade Centre attacks and while the world was getting ready to start throwing bombs and things at Afghanistan, everyone was convinced that one or other Middle Eastern terrorist group was going to unleash some sort of plague on us.
There was the anthrax postal scare, which had us all opening letters wearing latex gloves. There was the Ebola, which was apparently about to come across from the African wilderness via monkeys hidden in aircraft holds, and of course plague, which Saddam was said to be stockpiling ready to unleash into our now heavily-guarded water supplies.
The Daily Mail was of course at the forefront of the scaremongering, but a more intelligent news source such as the Times suggested, as I did, that if you want to wipe out millions of people then ‘flu was the way to do it.
It surprises me, therefore, that eight years on and an outbreak of swine flu, no-one has really been in the mood to say “it’s terrorists”. It is, after all, perfectly feasible. And swine flu is a bit worrying. There was a lot of concern over it a few months ago, then it died down, and now suddenly we had as many diagnoses in one week as we had in the preceeding three months, and that’s just in the UK.
Is swine flu one to really panic about? Personally I think people over-react because it’s got a specific name, same as with bird flu. If it was just “an outbreak of flu” people wouldn’t be so fussed about it – and maybe that would be a bad thing, maybe more and more people would be becoming infected and shuffling off on account of this rather evil respiratory strain.
I’ve been off work sick since Monday. I haven’t got swine flu, say the doctors, although on Monday if I had been able to get through to the swine flu helpline I suspect they may have told me I did – I had a good three flu-like symptoms, and they are diagnosing anyone with a temperature.
That’s not good in my opinion. Everyone thinks they have swine flu, but if they have something else, that should be treated with something other than Tamiflu, they are not going to get diagnosed correctly and we will have thousands of deaths attributed to swine fu and maybe caused by A.N.Other disease. And what if THAT virus is one released by a desert-dwelling despot? We won’t know until it’s too late…
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