Swine flu pandemic? It feels like a phoney war

Dr John Crippen is the pseudonym of an NHS doctor who writes a popular medical blog. This is his account of the view from the GP’s surgery.

Today, so far, there have been no calls at all. We have 15,000 patients and are close to one of the larger airports in England, but have not seen a case of flu. We have not had a single patient worrying that he or she might have flu. It feels like a phoney war. We have seen two patients with heart attacks, three acute asthmatic attacks, and a child who had swallowed an implausibly large piece of Lego. Such is general practice.

We met at lunchtime, not to talk of heart attacks and Lego, but of flu. There have been deaths in Mexico. There has been one in the US. Our Indian partner said: “There were 2,000 deaths, mainly children in Africa and Asia, yesterday.”

Our medical student looked shocked: “I didn’t know swine flu had reached that part of the world.” “It hasn’t,” said our partner. “I’m talking of deaths from malaria. But that isn’t news, is it?”

We were silent for a while. Time to get things in proportion.

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