December 10, 2009

Tamiflu?

Posted in Hysteria, Media, Politics, Society at 3:22 am by Paul Sagar

Shock, horror! Revelations that Tamiflu, er, maybe doesn’t work.

The Daily Express – “Crusading for a Fairer Britain”, no less – thundered in anger yesterday:

“TAMIFLU does not work on healthy patients who get swine flu, experts have claimed.

An investigation by the British Medical Journal has found no robust data to prove that Tamiflu prevents swine flu from becoming a serious condition.

In what could prove an acute embarrassment to the Government, analysis by two teams of academics suggests that the benefits of Tamiflu were vastly over-estimated.

And it could call into question the Government’s decision to spend £500million stockpiling the drug.”

Damning words indeed. How could the Government have been so foolish?

I wonder if it had anything to do with:

NOW SWINE FLU PANIC SWEEPS BRITAIN: “SWINE flu panic is sweeping Britain, with emergency phone lines overwhelmed and tens of thousands of people desperately stockpiling treatments”

“The National Health Service has 33million doses of anti-viral drugs like Tamiflu – enough for over half of the population – but people fear they will not get to those who need them.”

SWINE FLU WILL KILL 350 PEOPLE EVERY DAY: “”The death toll in Britain has already more than doubled in just one week to 29″;

“Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said the NHS is planning for almost a third of the population being struck down by the virus and up to 65,000 people dying over the next few months. It is also feared that 12 per cent of the workforce could be off sick within weeks, bringing the country to its knees.”

“Transport and other public services could be crippled and the NHS faces a potentially catastrophic strain on its already over-stretched resources. Estimates of the eventual death toll range from as few as 3,000 to a staggering 750,000 people.”

GIRL, 9, DIES OF SWINE FLU AS SHE WAITS FOR PILLS: “A YOUNG victim of swine flu died waiting for her anti-viral tablets to be sent in the post, it emerged last night.”

“Nine-year-old Asmaa Hussain is the seventh person in the UK to die after catching the bug. She had been taken to the doctor by her mother last Thursday suffering flu-like symptoms and he prescribed Tamiflu tablets as a precaution.”

“Asmaa suffered a massive epileptic fit and died the same evening before the tablets could be sent through the post.”

And slightly more bizarrely (though hardly surprising given the source):

MIGRANTS MAN SWINE FLU HELPLINE: “IMMIGRANTS who can barely speak English will be used to man the phones at emergency swine flu call centres, it was revealed yesterday.” [Click on the link for this one, it's worth it just for the picture they use]

Back in the summer silly season The Daily Express was one of the worst offenders for stoking swine flu hysteria. Let’s imagine what its front page would have been if the Government had refused to stock Tamiflu immediately. Probably something like “LABOUR MURDERERS WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO DIE BECAUSE MINISTERS SAY TAMIFLU ‘NOT 100% PROVEN”.

Given the fruit-loop mood of the country and the media pressure at the time, it’s hardly surprising that the Government panic-bought Tamiflu without first checking its efficacy. After all, stockpiling the drug and disseminating it as soon as it was available was never a sensible, long-term contingency plan against pandemic (you really shouldn’t give out anti-virals during the warm summer months so that the virus can mutate, become resistant and then get to work in the cold winter months). It was a forced action due to hysteria largely stoked by the tabloid media.

So the Daily Express really ought to be quiet. And so should anyone who turns around and criticises the Government for “wasting” money now, but who was a swine-flu-scardie-cat back in the summer.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, at least the Daily Mail has some claim to being long-term Tamiflu sceptical: “Tamiflu turned my children into hallucinating, sobbing wrecks”, after all.

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