I’d like to commend the writer of this Arab News editorial for presenting one of the most rational and even tempered pieces I’ve seen on swine flu (A/H1N1). It notes the fears, but also notes that governmental concern about the flu is not exaggerated. It notes that measures are being taken, but that the measures are not a painless, 100% guaranteed solution.

Editorial: Spread of swine flu

The World Health Organization has said that the spread of swine flu is “unstoppable.” It is an ominous warning.

When the pandemic broke out in Mexico three months ago, sci-fi horror movie images of deserted streets and people with face masks appeared to presage imminent disaster for the human race, accompanied as they were with comparisons to the 1918 flu pandemic (Spanish flu), a strain of the same H1N1 virus. Over the following two years, 100 million people perished and 500 million were infected, a third of the world’s population at the time. Were that to be replicated with the present world population, there would be 250 million dead and 2.2 billion infected.

But these are meaningless figures. Such extrapolation gives the lie to the absolute value of statistical analysis. It is not going to happen because this is not 1918. Back then, most people had no access to medical help and where it existed, it was limited in what it could do. There were no antiviral drugs, no antibiotics to treat complications; the drugs industry was in its infancy, knowledge of viruses limited. Moreover, communities across a large swathe of Europe were weakened from malnutrition and exhaustion following the ravages of the World War I and the political turmoil that ensued. They were easy prey to the virus. Today, there are the antiviral drugs, there is awareness of what to do.
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