Don’t worry: it’s all under control
I love everything about the story in the Times this week about the swine flu epidemic raging so far out of control that the government has given up its outstanding work containing it.
I use the word ‘outstanding’ because I think that’s the word they’d use. And The Centrist is nothing if not supportive.
According to the Times, Health Secretary Andy Burnham says it’s all going to plan. (By the way, did you ever wonder how his background qualifies him for this job? Well, he’s got a degree in English from Cambridge, and he’s a keen cricketer and an MP. What more health experience do you want during a deadly pandemic?)
Mr Burnham said: ‘Our approach has focused on containing the spread and working with the local NHS to identify cases, isolate them as quickly as possible, treat them with antivirals and treat those around them and offer prophylactic treatment to those around them. This is very resource-intensive, but it has been highly successful.’
Yes, the government’s containment plan worked so well that Mr Burnham’s quote was in a news article entitled: ‘Swine flu spreads so rapidly it cannot be contained’.
The same article noted: ‘The number of confirmed cases in Scotland increased by 111 yesterday — the largest one-day rise since the outbreak began.’
If that’s containment working well, I’d hate to see it working badly.
I can see why they’re stopping it.
A personal story
Let’s take a closer look at the government’s containment policy.
I’ll start with a personal example: a friend’s school in north London called for help after the vast majority of its students didn’t show show up last week - all were home with fevers. In my friend’s five-year-old’s class, 20 of the 25 students were ill.
The government swooped in. Those with the highest fevers were tested for swine flu. They tested positive.
The school was closed. Parents were told to pick up Tamiflu at the school, and were given no other advice about what to do. My friend went back to work, her daughter went out to play with friends. The government does not recommend not doing this, by the way. They recommend nothing if you are not personally exhibiting symptoms, even if you have been exposed to the virus in an up-close-and-personal way.
In its early stages, swine flu has such mild symptoms you could mistake it for hay fever or a cold. But during that time you will be spreading the flu to potentially vulnerable people.
This might go some way toward explaining why the government’s containment policy didn’t work. Or rather, why it worked so spectacularly well that swine flu is now raging out of control.
There’s more, though.
My friend wasn’t particularly worried about the whole thing, but she wanted her daughter swabbed just to reassure her that she did not have flu. But the health authorities refused to do it. They told her no further swabbing was happening at her school. Even those whose children had mild symptoms were told they could not be tested.
So out of, say, 100 children at her child’s school who probably contracted swine flu, only a handful were added to the government’s chart of verified cases, because the government refused to test the rest of them.
Now, the government’s numbers show that around 3,000 people have had swine flu in the UK so far.
But if you extrapolate the situation at my friend’s school out to a national level – if the government is only swabbing a fraction of those exposed to the virus country-wide, in other words – it’s possible, even likely, that 10,000 people or more have already had this disease.
Save yourselves
I suggest all readers take a look at how other governments are handling the outbreak, because I’ll tell you what the government won’t: this epidemic is going to knock us all on our arses this autumn. We could be left with empty offices, closed shops, a decimated workforce.
Other governments are urging their populations to stockpile enough food to feed their families for at least two weeks in case stores are closed if the staff become ill, or in case they themselves become ill suddenly. If you contract swine flu and you have to go to the store for bread, you will spread the virus. Just ilke that.
Other governments ask parents to self-quarantine for seven days if their child’s school is closed because of swine flu – in case their child has the flu but has not yet shown symptoms.
Other governments are taking this seriously.
As far as I can tell, the British government’s entire swine flu plan is Tamiflu. Don’t worry, they keep saying, we have Tamiflu.
Tamiflu has a mild palliative effect in some cases if given in the first day or two of the virus.
That’s all we got, people.
And the NHS seems to be hinting that we don’t actually have that much of it.
If you stop and think about it – if you, for example, read the Wikipedia page about the swine flu epidemic of 1918 – that should scare the hell out of you.
But the government, well, it’s got it all under control. You can tell that by way in which the virus is spreading like wildfire.
No need to worry.
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