The human instinct to arbitrarily select threats about which to panic, with a little help from the media, is proving very costly in the case of Swine Flu.
It apparently matters little that Australia’s Chief Medical Officer yesterday made a point of saying how mild Swine Flu was and how there was no need for alarm. We’re spending tens of millions of dollars because politicians — understandably — don’t want to be caught out responding to Swine Flu the way it should be addressed — with the same urgent response with which the nation met the great toe-stubbing epidemic of 1997 — when there’s the faintest chance an Australian could die from it.
Australians of course will die from flu this year, as they do every year, but for whatever reasons lurking deep in human psychology — porcine imagery, xenophobia, GFC-induced uncertainty — the far milder Swine Flu is what is sending Australia’s health system into overdrive.
And that costs money. Last time I made this point, a number of readers suggested I had no understanding of preventative health. But in the absence of a magic pudding, every dollar spent by a government is a choice with an opportunity cost and we’re spending a lot on swine flu that could be spent on more serious health issues.
Yesterday Nicola Roxon announced $43m would be spent buying additional courses of vaccine. That’s the vaccine for normal flu, by the way, not Swine Flu. That doesn’t exist yet and may not exist until after the pandemic is over, but the Government has pre-ordered that too, from CSL. They’re not saying how much that will cost, or what will be done with it if Swine Flu has disappeared by July or August.
It’s not Nicola Roxon’s fault. The politician hasn’t been born yet who’d be willing to stand up and say that the public, particularly the media, should stop treating swine flu as a biblical plague when there are lots more serious health matters to be dealt with.
The worried well are also rushing GPs with every sniffle, throat tickle and case of “not feeling 100%”. Monthly figures for GP visits are quite volatile, but centre around the 6-7m mark according to Medicare statistics. If there’s a million extra GP visits over April and May because of panic about Swine Flu, that will cost taxpayers $33.5m, based on GPs charging for Level B consultations, which have an MBS fee of $33.55.
Then there’s the cost of dislocation caused by school closures and what might become widespread business closures. Right across the country large businesses will be breaking out their risk management plans and wondering who can work from home.
This week a rumour has swept Parliament House that a public servant attending Estimates hearings had been sent home sick and tested positive for Swine Flu. Problematically, the relevant department isn’t scheduled to appear at Estimates til next week, but that didn’t stop questions being asked on multiple occasions of Nicola Roxon, who declined to “engage in speculation”.
Should Swine Flu spread in Parliament House, of course, there’ll be a push for MPs not to return next week, given the massive influx of people sitting weeks entail and capacity for returning staff and politicians to spread it into every electorate in the country. After this week’s playground antics, that may not be such a bad thing, but there is the business of government to transact quite apart from what happens in Question Time.
Our politicians and health chiefs might simply be playing it safe, but that approach comes with its costs and they’re not small and they won’t stop growing for some time.
Bernard Keane makes some good points, but the subs missed an opportunity here, to warn readers to ‘Get a grippe’ …
For once Bernard I agree. Today is No Tobacco Day and smoking related illnesses kill about 15,000 to 20,000 Australians every year.
Arriving aged 60 in 2002 the last seven years in this country has been a revelation. I put it down to the lousy education standards as well as a population who seem to think that the government is there to do everything for them.. I haven’t heard anyone yet, politician or medical boss, say the obvious. If Australians lost weight, kept fit and ate a HEALTHY diet their bodies would be in a much better situation to resist the flu . How things will develop when something really dangerous comes over the horizon I cannot conceive. Instead of waiting for the Government to do something … get off your fat A****S and eat and live healthily.
Scientist or not, BK is spot on. But he missed saying how this panic started—with almost certainly false mortality rates in Mexico. The headlines screamed 1000 dead and it took at least a week before a WHO person finally said that the number of confirmed deaths attributable to H1N1 was about 50. Now I am not even sure that 1000 dead in a place the size of Mexico city is exceptional (hmmmm, where is that back of envelope: 30,000 deaths per flu season in the USA, Mexico city is approx. one tenth that size so …about 3,000 dead per season/year, except mortality will assuredly be a lot higher in a developing country). Then there were two other critical bits of data missing: how many of those deaths were people with other serious conditions (in the US, 100% of the three deaths), and out of how many people infected (absolutely impossible to properly measure in that country, only guestimates which I have not seen). This swine flu appears to have higher infectious rates (human to human) so a higher percent of the population is likely to get it this season, but lower, much lower mortality rate. Which makes it less of a risk than any of the usual seasonal flu. Without the Mexican panic this flu would have gone totally unremarked. Unless of course it mutates into a killer variant, however, again this is highly unlikely esp. in Australia but might happen in Asia where it can swap genetic material with bird flu—the presumed source of all the real killer influenzas in history. (In that case it might even be an advantage for those exposed to this mild version because they might have some resistance to an evolved version of the virus—but much of the population would remain susceptible.)
So yes, this is a kind of outrageously ridiculous over-the-top panic. The possible benefits might be: (1) public education—maybe I am too optimistic but is it possible that the public might learn that influenza is almost impossible to stop, certainly with the current actions; no one knows if even drastic full-catastrophe mode would work (shutting down international travel, everyone gulping Relenza, quarantine anyone with a temperature) (2) institutional learning—it is just possible that this false alarm might have told us/them how to better prepare etc. (3) this is the real-world experiment that should tell us if Relenza/Tamiflu actually slows down a flu epidemic (my guess, without the drastic action, only a little bit).
I have heard real virologists say that it is not clear if the whole killer pandemic influenza like in 1918 is ever likely in today’s world. The reality is that by the time a human-human transmissible flu is up and running, by itself it doesn’t kill many people at all. Most deaths are caused by those secondary infections or pre-existing chronic conditions. In 1918 the world was so different—general health and general nutrition towards the end of a world war was poor and the ability to treat secondary infections, especially pneumonia and TB, was non-existent.
Finally if this absurd panic causes the governments to invest more seriously in influenza research that might be a good outcome.
Agree 100%. The old scare and control paradigm at work here!
If the client follower media headlined “2000 with flu”, we’d barely blink.
If they headlined 100,000 to be infected with flu this winter; again we’d not even notice.
So what is this all about…last time the swine flu hit – 1976, in America one person died of the flu and 26 died from the effects of the vaccination.
Hopefully Australians are starting to wake up to this ruse.
It’s time to get onto the first strike hit on North Korea.