Letters | 1 August 2009

Not every illness is swine flu

Sir: Congratulations to Sarah Standing (‘The national swine flu sickie’, 25 July). It seems incredible that so much money is being spent so recklessly when we have such an enormous debt on our national books. In these days of ‘patient-led’ medicine the public decides what it is suffering from and certificates are often available for the asking; no doubt the flu itself will be followed by epidemic ‘post-viral fatigue’.

GPs seem suddenly to have abandoned the god of ‘evidence-based’ medicine in favour of self-protection. I can say this because I am a GP of a certain vintage who rarely caught any disease from a patient. I must have seen 50 or more children with chickenpox or rubella and survived until my own children brought the infection to the house.

Swine flu has, it appears, always been with us so there are probably many in the community with antibodies.