You shouldn’t be trivialising this issue, bird flu killed a swan in Scotland remember!

Okay, as a scientist with a background in immunology there are some daft comments in this piece, and in fact statements which are clearly untrue.

Avian flu has not “ended” – it is still active, still killing, and a few mutations away from being a very, very serious disease. The only reason it hasn’t been so far is that fortunately it hasn’t evolved to be particularly good at human-to-human transmission. Yet.

Human societies and the media aren’t very good at understanding risks – these flu types have the potential to be very destructive, and even if the risk in a particular year isn’t that great, eventually one will take off, and when it does it is extremely important that we are prepared for it in terms of good research, vaccine stocks and so on. That’s why Bush quite rightly devoted $7.1bn to the problem – and incidentally you are lying when you claim that this money was given to pharmaceutical firms. Some of it was, much of it wasn’t, and this is perfectly reasonable given that they make the vaccines needed.

Now, yes there can be a lot of hype at the time, and there are some silly scare scories out there at the moment, but in case you haven’t noticed this is largely down to the media rather than scientists or drug company press releases.

We shouldn’t be going around in gas masks, but it’s equally silly to claim that stories like this are the result of Big Pharm conspiracies. They may do some decidedly dodgy things, but creating this particular scare isn’t one of them.

The above comment sounds a bit like I’m scare-mongering myself actually. I’m not – 100 people a day in the U.S. alone die from standard flu, so let’s keep things in perspective. However, it’s silly to say that no threat exists. The risk that any particular outbreak will be The Big One is small, and it’s silly for the media to create a panic, but it is very important to be prepared, and to take the potential threat seriously.

Well regardless of what happens its not hypochondira. This is a new strain of flu spreading in multiple areas from person to person, with a higher mortality rate than ordinary flu and to which we have no immunity.

Thats certainly a serious circumstance, and theres nothing wrong with taling it seriously. Cherry picking examples is all well and good. However, much less dangerous strains in the 50′s and 60′s far less dangerous strains of flu killed large numbers of people.

Sure, the media is happy to report extensivly prior to viruses becoming human-to-human, which is really the key point. But Martin is right that we are right to be very careful about these diseases- Avian flu remains a high risk and could be an incredibly deadly pandemic with just a few mutations.

But at this point theres a very high risk of a pandemic, which could kill a substantial number of people in the UK. It certainly more worthy of coverage than terrorism…

We don’t “suckle on scaremongering like a baby to a teat”. It’s getting very boring. The worst culprit is the BBC and in particular the Today programme. It’s total hysterics over the economic situation and now the flu are absolutely ridiculous, especially as it doesn’t actually manage to report the story. They’ve lost any credibility with a stream of the most ridiculous hyperbole.

Should also just state – by background I mean “some professional experience with” – I’m not an immunologist, I work on immune system simulation and AIS. I don’t want to claim authority I don’t have.

@Chris: I think the problem is that the media are terrible at accurately portraying risk – either they ignore something, or it’s a massive hype. They’re not very good at reporting on something which could be a big threat, but may not be right now, if that that makes sense.

I watched part of a WHO press conference which was grimly hilarious – reporters desperately trying to get a figure of the number of people who were going to die out of the spokesperson, and the spokesperson patiently refusing to make a wild guess.

Martin’s comments seem much more proportionate than the original piece – which seems to be suggesting that because the media has exaggerated the immediate threat of other diseases, governments should totally ignore this one. Surely it’s a primary duty of government to prepare for this kind of threat.

@tim f

Thanks

I don’t really see what’s to debate about preparations. In the U.S., 100 people die every day from flue. Nobody disputes that Swine Flu is more dangerous, and as with any type of flu there is a risk that it can spread globally. Making sure we have e.g. adequate vaccine stocks in reserve is a no brainer.

And yeah, the WHO conference was just painful to watch. It’s very frustrating for researchers who are trying to get across a clear and calm message (and people like the CDC are doing a great job on this) to see their words picked up and re-engineered by headline-hunters. The media are horrificly bad at science reporting.

This is very true. The number of dedicated journalists for science is really getting lower, and whenever a story get traction they are often taken off it anyway. It sad to see how happy the media is to have this one area filled with people who know nothing about it, often for sensationalism. Its the cause of every science paper saying whether some foodstuff is good or bad being treated as a major timefiller, amongst other problems…

Another opportunity for a Labour Party crony to make a shed load of money from supplying vaccines, courtesy of the taxpayer, donate some of it to the party coffers and become a Lord.

As Chris Morris’s On The Hour proved so long ago, it is the medium that defines the message, not the other way round.

While I agree with the sentiments, especially on the Swine Flu thing, there is one passing comment in here which really exemplifies why the left is often considered to be humourless from the right’s pov and why lefty blogs often are less successful than the ones on the right:

“the World Cup on the big fuckoff screen while Carlsberg-Tetleys count the cash”

I know it’s only a flippant gag, but I mean, really. Is being a football fan and drinking beer really THAT bad? I know it’s pedantic to point it out in what is otherwise an OK piece, but it just struck me as an example of the kind of resentful negativity that doesn’t do the left many PR favours.

I apologise for coming over all historical again, but I have the misfortune to be half-American and every time I see some particularly arrant ignorance from one of my own I feel mortified.

While it is true that half a million Americans died in 1918, the statement as given would have read better, “In 1918, at least 25 million people died.” I guess in 1976 they were even less globally aware than they were in 2006.

“We suckle on scaremongering like a baby to a teat,”

Yes, the biggest example of this trend is ‘Catastrophic Global Warming’, of course. We will never learn.

Polar bears are more cute than Mexicans

Martin as a scientist with a background in immunology

I clearly have no vested interest in bigging up stories about the threat to humans from infectious diseases.

Yeah, right.

My favourite scare story was CJD because it turned out that David Mellor was right to stuff a burger down his face for the cameras after all!!!!

But the problem is that when the public swallow this sort of stuff so easily, it explains why the Government doesn’t have to work too hard to use the fear of terrorism to lock down all our lives.

When it’s really lightning we should be worried about.

@pagar: You’d probably be more credible to others here if you attempted to actually tackle the points made, rather than resorting to making wild (and untrue) accusations about people you disagree with.

Martin Avian flu has not “ended” – it is still active, still killing, and a few mutations away from being a very, very serious disease. The only reason it hasn’t been so far is that fortunately it hasn’t evolved to be particularly good at human-to-human transmission

Speaking as a scientist, Martin, could that be because it is bird flu?

“Polar bears are more cute than Mexicans2

You know the wrong Mexicans. Ay! Caramba!

It all goes to show that science IS the new religion.

We sometimes hear rebukes from patients with a terminal disease who live twice as long predicted – the incredible thing is that some people REALLY BELIEVE a doctor can tell them how long they’ve got (3 months, 6 months, a year, etc) – a doctor can take an educated guess based on the characteristics of a given population, of course, but none of them, no matter how clever, are clairvoyant.

So how do we report on an infectious disease that just might kill a large number of people but more likely won’t?
Is it best to adopt the ostrich ploy and run the risk of the ‘I-told-you-so brigade’ putting the boot in IF it all goes horribly wrong?
Or do we try to anticipate the worse and share all of the gory details with the general public anticipating the inevitable hysteria such stories generate?

I seem to recall a similar hysterical note in the reporting of a deadly virus that gained a certain notoriety in the gay bath houses of Frisco – a virus that has now accounted for many millions of lives globally.

The battle against microbes, especially rapidly evolving organisms like viruses will be lost at some at some point , especially if it is a bug that is transmitted in the air – maybe not today, but such an outbreak does seem likely at some point.

If anyone’s interested, and I do apologise for the slightly clumsy shoehorning, I wrote a piece on my blog intended as a gentle riposte to the attitude of Simon Jenkin’s piece on this the grauniad today, it would apply here as well.

The point is that scientists, proper experts in stuff, have a far greater understanding of this issue than the writer of this blog (and much of the media). Why not visit the excellent CDC site and try and understand the science before criticising it.

It’s also worth pointing out that scientists are dumping their research on this outbreak in the public domain as fast as they can. Why would they do that if it was a big pharma conspiracy?

@Pagar Speaking as a scientist, Martin, could that be because it is bird flu?

Not particularly. The fact that it is avian flu does not mean that it is restricted to birds, just that it is more adapted to that host at present. Spanish flu for example was well adapted to both birds and humans.

There’s a woman in my office due to go on holiday to Mexico in a few weeks and she was worried about pig flu till I pointed out she’s more likely to get stabbed, shot or kidnapped there.

That put her mind to rest.

@shatterface

Nick (12): I think you’ll find Marshal McLuhan beat Chris Morris by a few decades.

I’m just grateful most of us got the CJD vaccine in time.

Still touch and go for Jack Bauer though.

As usual this right up the street of the Daily Mash

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/who-will-be-the-first-arsehole-to-wear–a-facemask?-200904291731/

There’s a woman in my office due to go on holiday to Mexico in a few weeks and she was worried about pig flu till I pointed out she’s more likely to get stabbed, shot or kidnapped there.

That put her mind to rest.

Genius.

But seriously, this article mirrors something I wrote myself and to be honest I am feeling a little silly now.

What Swine Flu is, is a risk. Not a particularly large risk, but a risk all the same. The media are notorious scaremongers but the way Swine Flu is being reported is not exceptionally bad to be honest.

The public should be informed of these things but I don’t think the scientific illiteracy of the media is much worse than that of the general public. This is a risk and we should be wary of it, that’s the basic news story, I don’t place much blame at the media’s door on this occasion for trying to inflate it.

But, more importantly – Man Utd beat Arsenal 1 – 0.

But did Arsenal have Swine Flu? NOW that’s an excuse I am waiting to hear…

There’s an article on Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science site about the press trying to recruit him to say there’s nothing to worry about, and their failure to understand the concept of ‘risk’.

I’m worried about a plague because I don’t want the survivors to be lead by Max Beasley.

Wasn’t Bird Flu a classic exampleofmisdirected effort by government. We seemed to panic every time a dead bird was found in the street and assumed it would spread infection to humans,or to other “British” birds and then to humans. It never seemed to be grasped that once infection had spread to Humans anywhere in the world, probably Asia, then it would spread. Containing British Birds was pointless.

I’m afraid the situation in Mexico, with a countrywide four day shutdown ordered to attempt to contain the virus, does speak for itself. At the risk of being flamed, it seems frankly silly to sit here saying the Mexicans are staging this entire exercise to scare us at the command of moneyed interests and in fact the threat to Mexican lives is secretly nil. Apart from anything else, the vast majority of ‘moneyed interests’ in Mexico will find this national shutdown vastly damaging to their viability.

Clearly the Mexican situation is not here in Britain now, but (unlike with avian flu or SARS or many other health scares) there is an entirely logical reason for believing we will be in the same situation given a period of time: the influenza virus is highly contagious and spreads internationally. It does this all the time with less deadly strains.

Of course this epidemic is highly convenient for the media and pharmaceutical companies, but that isn’t evidence they are making it up in some sinister conspiracy to fool the population into “suckling from their teat”.

The media are notorious scaremongers

Better not let Bendy Girl hear you say that…………

Claude says: ‘So let’s just hope that the current panic surrounding the swine flu is nothing more than cyclical hypochondria like it has been a dozen times before.’

Let’s just hope, eh, Claude? Yes, because ‘just hoping’ is precisely what any government should do when contemplating the small but real possibility of a major public health problem.

I’ve got a better idea: why doesn’t the Government employ specialist doctors to evaluate potential epidemics and follow their advice on such matters as stockpiling medicines? Oh wait, they already do. Don’t tell Claude, or he’ll write another of his calm and considered comments with LOTS of WORDS in CAPITALS and plenty of EXCLAMATION marks!!!!

Swine flu is a risk just as climate change is a risk.

Yes, really, climate change is a risk, go look at the IPCC report which gives a range of possible outcomes some of which are worse than others.

People around here seem perfectly happy to advocate spending a few trillion on one of those risks (I don’t argue that we should do nothing, just over what it is exactly that we should be doing) and yet unhappy that anything at all is spent on the flu risk.

Just odd really.

@37 – nice bit of whataboutery there.

As with regular flu, the best thing to do if you contract it is to go to bed with a hot drink of lemon & honey. But still some people believe the ads and take a ‘cold and flu remedy’ and struggle into work, thus infecting everyone else. If this all gets out of hand, I say some blame should be laid at the door of those drugs companies.