Swine ’flu was long predicted by the Doctor Who writers. Except that time it was caused by Daleks.



   I am so sick of the fear-mongering in the New Zealand media at the moment that has caused a rush on Tamiflu. This is not big news anywhere else, and it should not be big news here. Headlines like ‘Swine flu toll at 109’ hint at fatalities (this is not the case) and, once again, makes me question The New Zealand Herald’s agenda in this. Or the Ministry of Health’s.
   How are your Roche shares looking today? (Up 2·2 per cent on the 11th, says the Murdoch Press.) Has the PM asked his Merrill Lynch friends to buy up some stock since April 27?
   We need to get a lot of this into perspective, and while I was corrected by my friend Dan Gordon on the effectiveness of Tamiflu, we still have some serious viruses out there that I suspect are really killing people.
   Swine ’flu is not, contrary to the impression from the top-of-the-news treatment metered out by everyone from the Herald to National Radio, one of the signs of the apocalypse.
   Of course we should be vigilant and take the necessary precautions this winter. But we should also be asking other questions that seem to have slipped the minds of some media. Posted by Jack Yan, 10:43  permalink

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