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There is no reason to imagine that this flu is any more dangerous than any other flu.
The pork industry is not keen on the name “swine flu” because it fears that it will be bad for its image. Its fears are not groundless. Ten countries, including China and Russia, have now banned the import of pork products, even though the World Health Organisation advises that you can’t get H1N1 from eating bacon. Egypt has even ordered a cull of all the country’s pigs. Presumably, in a Muslim state, there aren’t so very many pigs, and people aren’t going to be that upset about them dying in a rhetorical gesture.
Mexican flu, the obvious alternative, is disliked by Mexicans, because it is felt that this stigmatises the whole country. Some Mexican politicians argue anyway that H1N1 originated in Asia, then spread into Mexico via the US. The US-owned, Mexican-based pig-farm at the centre of the story insists that neither any of its staff nor any of its livestock has tested positive.
The plausible theory that H1Ni originated in Mexico is still just a plausible theory. One expert sympathetic to Mexico’s worries about blame has suggested that the new strain should be called novel flu. No one involved in the production of literary fiction has baulked at the title, which is a good sign, although it doesn’t solve the problem of what to call the next new flu. Meta-novel flu, perhaps.
No, that won’t do. This flu, after all, has achieved the quality of a meta-novel already, one that is being written and re-written in all its possible permutations before anyone even knows how the real story will unfold. The absurdity of such an approach was summed up on Tuesday night, on Newsnight. If swine flu “cannot be contained”, an authoritative-sounding voice asked, “how can we stop it spreading?” By re-phrasing the question, let’s hope.
“We”, of course can’t “stop it spreading”, not at an individual level, until we catch swine flu ourselves. Then we can stay home till the ambulance comes, hoping that our own experience of the illness will be mild, and that we are not responsible for passing the virus on to somebody who is more vulnerable. (This probably isn’t the time to remind people that their babies should be immunised against such things as measles, mumps and rubella for similar reasons, but I’m going to anyway.) As yet, barely anyone on the planet has a personal interest in this story.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
It is still a prurient global spectacle centred on a small number of individual and far-off tragedies. Even the panic-stricken media coverage has driven only a small number of people to seek medical attention. Weirdly, even some of those with good reason to be worried (like a recent trip to Mexico) were advised to go to their GP, trailing their possible infection with them.
One GP, in Clapham, South London, has told the press that he is in no position to deal with such patients, even though he has had one and is waiting for her test results. He has been given no anti-virals to take himself, is in contact with other patients all day, and none of the local pharmacies have any Tamiflu to supply to patients with prescriptions anyway.
