No More A Swine
It’s not a swine flu anymore. It’s now called Influenze A H1N1. And things don’t seem as bad as first predicted by the experts. Colleagues in the hospital are cheering the stepping down of the alert level from orange to yellow. Stressing that this was not a signal that Singapore is “out of the woods”, our health minister Mr Khaw said easing up now on the measures would avoid fatigue and conserve valuable resources “for the big battle which may come” — the winter flu season, six months away.
Yes, I can almost hear the sighs of relief. But let’s take a step backwards. What about 300 (some say 247, some say 350) of our pals were quarantined in the Metropark Hotel in Hongkong? Are they just relieved? Or are they also angry and frustrated? We may also need to apologise to the Mexicans in China, the Chinese in Mexico, the Mexicans needing a visa to get into Singapore, the pigs that were all slaughtered in Egypt. Fortunately, the pig that’s sitting in the zoo in Afghanistan was just quarantined.
And it seemed that it was just a moment ago that the WHO was expecting a global pandemic which cannot be contained. Experts of every specialty has been predicting doomsday scenarios. Our dear Dr Margaret Chan at the WHO raised the alert level from 4 to an unprecedented 5. No medical authority or media organisation has confined its reporting to the facts. Instead, the most alarmist of a range of possibilities is seized and exploited. The results? Public events were cancelled. Organisations big and small were hoarding doses of Tamiflu and Relenza. Face masks and thermometers were sold out. Prices escalated. A flurry of H1N1 test kits, “alternative” cures for swine flu, “discovered” from ancient medical texts flooded the market. Crazy videos and conspiracy theories about countries releasing the virus as an act of terrorism whet the appetite of paranoid schizophrenics. Doomsday prophesies come alive again. The fans of “ancient wisdom” would just love the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on 21st December 2012 and dispose of their worldly possessions for their prophets’ safekeeping. It might have been possible for a Tom Jones to convince people to commit mass suicide if he could also convince them that they won’t go to heaven if they die of swine flu.
Now, the WHO is asking countries that took “significantly different” measures to combat swine flu, such as restricting international travel, to justify their actions. Why? Maybe they just found out that the confirmed H1N1 death rate in Mexico appears to be a dozen people, roughly in line with the normal death rate from the common flu there. The latter kills some 12,000 people a year worldwide. Relative to the number of people exposed to it, contaminated Indian rojak probably killed more people per hundred than H1N1.
Whether the virus will mutate and kill millions is still unknown. But let’s all be aware that while precautions are necessary, the media and the medical bureacrats all have vested interests in pandemic scares. Better safe than sorry but it’s wise for everyone to put all expert opinions in perspective. As with SARS, the panic caused far more damage than the disease itself.
