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Jayne Dowle - Let's have the facts instead of the fear stories about the flu pandemic
HAVE you cancelled your holiday yet? Booked an appointment with the doctor, just in case? My dad has. He went to the surgery on Tuesday, after developing a sore throat and general flu-like symptoms.
I think he felt a bit silly, but who can blame him for wanting to be sure? It is more than a year since he went on holiday to Mexico, and he is certainly not a hypochondriac, but he just wanted to be convinced there was no chance that it could be swine flu.
His GP assures him that it's an ordinary chill.
It is natural to be concerned. Every morning brings news of how the illness is spreading around the world with seemingly astonishing speed, as the headlines scream "Swine flu could strike millions".
As you put your children to bed last night, were you thinking what I was thinking? That you wish you hadn't seen quite so many apocalypse movies?
It is frightening what the threat of a global pandemic can do to the imagination. As you kiss those innocent little faces goodnight, no parent wants to think about replaying a scene from one of those movies in their very own home.
We can control so much about our lives, from the job we do to the food we eat, but a threatened pandemic – such as this – makes us all feel, at heart, as defenceless as our ancestors in the face of the Black Death. It is a human response, and a survival instinct kicks in.
As we scan websites for information about swine flu, and listen obsessively to the news, there is a desperate urge to
equip ourselves with the facts we need to protect ourselves.
Despite the shambles in Parliament over MPs' expenses, and the dire state of the economy, there really is only one news story in town.
You don't need me to tell you that it is crucial for us all to keep calm and carry on. But as a mother, a daughter, and as an individual, I would like to reiterate how important it is for us all to receive clear and precise information from the Government and the medical authorities, via a responsible media.
So far, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Department of Health's Chief Medical Officer, has struck just the right tone; measured, articulate and reasonable. But if this outbreak is to develop into an official pandemic, then the public needs to know where it stands and what steps are in place to help us.
What vaccines are available? How many has Britain stockpiled? Who is a priority? What will be the procedure for receiving them? Gordon Brown says that we are one of the
best-prepared countries in the world to deal with a flu pandemic. But when we can't trust him on the economy, or to maintain discipline in his own party, we can't help but wonder why we should trust him on this one.
We need the facts in order to judge when the threat of serious and widespread illness is real, and when it is hyped. The track record on previous health scares is hardly impressive. Remember the panic over the dead swan found with H5N1, the deadly strain of bird flu, in Fife, a couple of years ago?
I hope we have all learned some lessons from that. It was almost as if there was a collective will to make something happen, to prove that the wretched creature had infected every sparrow and seagull in the country, and, potentially, every human.
In the end, all that the hysteria achieved was to panic us unnecessarily, and lead to the semi-starvation of thousands of garden birds by people too scared to put out bread in case they ended up contracting the disease. Crying wolf definitely does more harm than good. It is vital to keep a sense of perspective.
I gained my perspective, certainly about the fragility of human life, about 10 years ago during a serious winter flu outbreak. I worked in an office in London at the time, and every morning, as I drove into the car-park, the attendant would give me a cheery wave.
One day he was there. The next he wasn't. As we all sniffled and coughed our way to work, I just assumed he had taken a holiday. I found out a week or so later that the man had died from respiratory problems brought on by the flu.
Then I heard that a friend had lost her mother. The lady, a widow, lived alone in Oxfordshire, and kept in touch with her daughter daily by telephone. After two or three days of unreturned phone calls, my friend sensed something was badly wrong, and went to find out. She discovered her mother dead in bed, from pneumonia after catching the flu.
In a life-threatening situation we want honesty, not hysteria. Behind the headlines are human stories that affect people like you and me.
If this week does nothing else, it should remind us that human life is fragile, and deserves to be treated not as the latest sensation, but with respect.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
