Health services worldwide are likely to be hard-pressed by swine flu-related illness in the months ahead. Secondary infections with Streptococcus pneumoniae, other streptococci (e.g. Streptococcus pyogenes), Haemophilus influenzae and Staphylococcus aureus are likely to be important causes of morbidity and mortality. The UK Department of Health recently published clinical pathways for the manag...

There is a conspiracy theory about nearly everything. So claims that swine flu was a scam come as no surprise. 'This was a pandemic that never really was' according to Paul Flynn, MP who prepared a recent report on the flu pandemic for the Council of Europe. 1 The report expresses alarm about the way the pandemic was handled. It criticizes the proportionality of the response and argues that ove...

457 final global death toll was 216). It is striking that while the scale of public anxiety has steadily increased in response to these scares, the number of fatalities has declined. Public health zealots are increasingly resorting to the rhetoric of tombstones and icebergs — and pandemics — in relation to obesity. Promoters of these health scares combine grim warnings of the threat of mass mor...

On 1 January, following agitation by journalists, opposition politicians and medical experts alike, the UK government launched a nationwide influenza awareness campaign. As morbidity and mortality figures rose during December, especially for H1N1 swine flu, ministers abandoned their pleas that there was no need for such a campaign, which would normally have started three months earlier. Even wh...

Given the recent occurrence of swine flu, many predictions have been made concerning future occurrence. In particular, a strong Fall 2009 outbreak was predicted, motivating the development of a swine flu vaccine to be distributed prior to this predicted onslaught. This is reminiscent of a swine flu scare that occurred in 1976, again predicted as a pandemic. Approximately 25% of the population w...

What is pandemic flu? Sometimes new strains of flu may appear that people have little or no immunity to. When this happens, the virus can spread easily between people and cause an outbreak on a global scale — a pandemic. For example, the 2009 H1N1 swine flu was considered a pandemic flu. Although flu pandemics are rare, they can have severe consequences, including high rates of worker absenteei...