Across the pond

The world has been on red alert for several days now. And this morning’s newspapers are headlining the news that there are now thirteen cases of swine flu in Britain, including two who caught it by human to human transmission. The message is you had better get yourself a green mask if you are meeting anyone who has just come back from Mexico.

But on the BBC Radio Today Programme this morning we learnt that Mexico has now decided that the figure for suspected deaths is 101 not 176. That still sounds a worryingly large number. But Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, told the BBC that based on the samples they had examined the mortality rate is no worse than that of seasonal flu.

If they’ve got in right this time, that means you are no more at risk chatting to someone just back from Mexico than you are from being in contact with the thousands of stay at homes who get our very own British non-swine flu every winter.

Now there is a very real risk, given the huge volume of air travel, that a very nasty bug is going to girdle the earth and kill millions. But it looks as if the lesson of this particular story is the most virulent contagious disease we have to live with daily is the media bug. No mask can stop it getting to you. Even if you never read newspapers, never watch the tele, listen to radio surf the web, it will still get to you. Because everyone else will be talking about it, at the water cooler, at the greengrocers, at the supermarket checkout.

Perhaps the government should be stock-piling supplies of the scepticism vaccine.