There are lots of interesting things about the mass hysteria associated with swine flu.
Part of it is genuine – that one day an influenza epidemic may sweep the planet and knock off a siginificant proprtion of the human race.
Another part of it is the fact that this current swine flu epidemic seems by all standards to be pretty benign so far. It has simply gained a lot more attention.
Our place has been involved in the management of a couple of possible cases. I’m not actually sure if we’d had a confirmed one. And they have received a disproportionate amount of attention – ie “wear this mask, follow me, bypass this queue of waiting sick people, this consultant will see you immediately”. All a little bit unfair seeing as the 80 ear old granny with pneumonia has been waiting two hours.
Everyone had a 10 minute session on mask fitting that involved a computer, some tubing, and a guy getting paid 800 quid a day to say “yes the mask fits”.
The BMJ has many wonderful blogs if you’re an interested medic, and i suppose even if you’re not. Tom Nolan has been blogging on swine flu and provided this quote from a London GP.
My feeling is that the main beneficiaries of this policy are the drug company that makes Tamiflu, who must be dancing with glee at the business. The other aspect is that I suspect Tamiflu or similar drugs will now be considered necessary for all sorts of flu in the future – plenty of future business too.
If the word swine were removed from all of this then GPs would just be doing what they always used to do – give advice about staying at home, drinking plenty of fluids and so on. The current flu seems to be no worse (and possibly even a bit better) than seasonal flu.
So why does this attract so much significant change in practise and funding (and with good reason) when simple things like ICU beds and overall hospital capacity don’t (when they have much better reasons)?
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