Swine flu panic.

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 mortality with bland exhortations that there is no need to panic (nothing could be less reassuring). They commonly appeal for vigilance and issue banal advice, such as that circulated by the government to every household in the country about swine flu (and dutifully circulated to GPs by the PCT). It seems doubtful that the suggestion that used tissues should be disposed of in a bin will make a major contribution to stopping the spread of the flu virus, although it may deter some people from keeping them in the fridge. Of course, it is easy to ignore the increasingly absurd flu alerts from the PCT and other agencies. But while those running primary care services are preoccupied with non-existent diseases, doctors and nurses in surgeries are struggling with a mounting workload of people with real health problems (as well as a few with media-generated anxieties). As Simon Jenkins commented on the first case of swine flu in London, ‘Nothing justified the pandemonium with which the British authorities and media greeted news of the illness last week’.