Swine flu: is panic the key to successful modern health policy?

Abstract

From the very moment that the first cases of swine flu reached Scotland last April, panic had already begun sweeping across the whole lengths and breadths of Britain.1 During the early stages of the outbreak, there was a feeling of muted anxiety among a large proportion of the UK population, in anticipation of the impending threat. This was only compounded when Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, warned seemingly prema-turely that the new swine flu outbreak could out-strip the 1999–2000 flu mortality of 22,000 by ‘several times over’.2,3 Yet now in to 2010, we are still waiting. Such a statement was relatively mild compared to the many other predictions that fol-lowed, including economic forecasters who specu-