We did not need to be told to keep calm and carry on — that seems to be our instinctive, collective British reaction to crises. In the case of swine flu, as with bird flu, (or even Spanish flu) the public has reacted with commendable common sense. There has been no mass absenteeism from work, no fad for face-masks; not even the closure of schools has provoked a panic.
The national mood was summed up by the infected schoolgirl who announced that it was actually no worse than having a cold. Even the 24-hour news channels, though desperate for any story that can fill their air time, have given up trying to whip people up into a swine-flu fever.
The Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson, still seems to hope that the flu might yet sweep across the country like some biblical plague. Indeed, we have been treated over the past few days to the bizarre spectacle of the public and the newspapers trying to calm a government that is keen to be in crisis mode. There are sound scientific reasons to remain vigilant — there is a chance that this flu could return in more virulent form in the autumn. But so far the facts do not support the attempts to place us all at panic stations. At the time of writing there have been roughly 1,500 cases in 21 countries, and yet only 30 people have died. This suggests that this variation of flu is only slightly more lethal than the normal seasonal variety.
Much of the original, misplaced panic came from a crude attempt to extrapolate from what happened in Mexico. This ignored the fact that Mexico is a country where roughly half the population do not have health insurance and have to pay for visits to the doctor and for drugs.
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