Hype
I’m not a fan of hype in any form – particularly whipping up fear in the public. I was talking to a sister at the DGH in Eastbourne the other day as I was told that the hospital was full and people were being transferred to Hastings. I assumed that it was because of the flu. I was completely wrong. There were one or two cases of young adults being treated but no one had been seriously ill or had complications and not many people had stayed overnight for the H1N1 virus. What was happening was the usual bouts of flu at this time of the year and also the usual bed blocking where elderly people can’t be released as they have nowhere to go. She told me she would not take the vaccine, nor would many others on the staff.
If we turn our attentions to the US, we see the President has just declared an H1N1 pandemic. Yet, and this is the crux of my point, the American people are being told that 1,000 people have died from H1N1 flu. However the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) who have up to date figures of deaths/diseases etc. cannot match that figure at all. So the 1,000 people is a figure plucked out of nowhere. On the CDC website recent figures for deaths from influenza are lower and they do not include H1N1. So something somewhere is not quite right.
Getting back to hype. I like to think we are intelligent enough to ignore much of the blown up nonsense we read in the papers.
