Is This The Long Awaited Pandemic?

[Peter Presland]

This is also true for the UK Ed. If you have flu like symptoms you are not permitted to visit your doctor but must phone them.

I had occasion to be sitting in our local health centre waiting room back in October last year. They have one of those old-fashioned long LCD strips that run messages across them at well below reading speed. To while away the wait, it can be quite entertaining to second guess what's coming next.

On this occasion I was watching a crude image of a tank (I kid you not) trundling along in front of a message that gradually read "If you think you may have swine flu, please..." Screen full so a pause before next line.

Naturally enough I filled it in mentally with "bugger off and go home" and a few other choice suggestions.

And, in essence that is indeed what it said - only in the usual bureaucrat-speak.

I had a bit of a laugh with my Doc about when I got to see him - we usually spend more time discussing ephemera than my trivial medical concerns anyway - He told me that indeed they were given strong advice - to be ignored at their peril - to treat the whole question of 'Swine flu' as a grave risk and to give it prominence etc etc. I suggested he substitute 'Pig' for 'Swine' and make the position of the sign pause a little less inviting of ridicule.

But we agreed that to have a good chuckle at it was probably in the nature of a tonic - better capable of staving it off (and less potentially damaging) than the mercury-adjuvant containing vaccine they were offering - and being number-of-doses-administered targeted on.