It’s never been off our news screens and you could be forgiven for thinking the BBC has a strict minimum use policy on flu virus graphics (if we make it we’ve gotta use it)

It’s never been off our news screens and you could be forgiven for thinking the BBC has a strict minimum use policy on flu virus graphics (if we make it, we’ve gotta use it). Shirley Gibb has Some Thoughts on Swine Flu.

On July 27^th this year the Sunday Herald reported that Exeter City Council “has identified the empty catacombs, currently used as a tourist attraction, as a potential mortuary. A council spokesman said it could turn to the plan if the crematorium and cemeteries could not keep up with funeral demands.”

Help! Run for the hills! We're all doomed!

No, wait – unpack your tent. Here are Nicola Sturgeon and Andy Burnham reassuring us that swine flu is a mild illness from which most people will recover in a few days. No need to panic after all then.

Unless…(cue threatening music) the virus mutates in the autumn. Then we'll really be in trouble. Better start preparing to be one of the few people left alive when this new pandemic is over.

We all know from films and TV how to cope – steal food and bottled water from the empty shops, set off to find other survivors, and start a new community. Oh, and remember to find some weapons, because there are bound to be other evil survivors living nearby who want to rule the new world and will kill anyone who gets in their way.

But again, stop panicking. Our caring government are ordering in enough vaccine to keep us all safe from this new deadly strain of swine flu.

So which is it? Catacombs needed for the dead, or people being slightly ill for a few days? Is this just a rehearsal for the real show opening later in the year? It's almost impossible to make sense of the huge amount of conflicting information in the media, and put out by the government.

At the time of writing, there seems to be little to worry about just now as far as the actual illness goes. The vast majority of people who have had it seem to have been mildly ill for a short time, and recover well. There have of course been some more serious cases, and some deaths, but these seem to have happened where people have what are being described as serious underlying health problems.

In July, at the height of the outbreak, there had been 29 deaths in the UK. The average number of deaths from seasonal flu each year is 3 000 - 4000. Which makes swine flu seem fairly benign.

But if the illness itself is not a cause for great concern, at least for otherwise healthy people, I'm not sure the same can be said of the government's response to it.

First we had the Tamiflu debacle. TV pictures of perfectly healthy children being given a prescription drug because someone in their class at school had swine flu were presumably meant to reassure us that everything possible was being done to stop the spread of the pandemic.

Well they didn't reassure me. They horrified me. Modern drugs are strong things, to be treated with caution. They shouldn't be given out willy nilly to healthy people, especially children.

According to the medical journal Euro surveillance, data gathered from children given Tamiflu as a preventative measure at some schools in England shows that more than half of them suffered side effects, including sickness, headaches and stomach ache. Other side effects reported include poor concentration, problems sleeping, feeling dazed or confused, and nightmares.

An article in The Guardian (31 July 2009) reports that three years ago, Roche, the manufacturers of Tamiflu, wrote to US doctors warning that

"people with the flu, particularly children, may be at an increased risk of self-injury and confusion shortly after taking Tamiflu and should be closely monitored for signs of unusual behaviour".

The move followed a 10-month review by the US Food and Drug Administration, which found 103 cases of "neuropsychiatric adverse events", including the deaths of a 17-year-old boy who was killed after jumping in front of a truck and a 14-year-old boy who fell after climbing on a balcony railing.”

There's also the issue of immunity build up. It's not so long ago that people were found to be developing immunity to antibiotics because they had been so widely prescribed for a number of years. Have we learnt nothing from this?

The government have now changed their policy on Tamiflu, and no longer give it preventatively. So they must have decided that was a mistake.

But how on earth, given that they are surely being advised by the top medical people in the country, could they make a mistake like that?

Either there is some undisclosed reason for them using as much Tamiflu as possible, or the medical profession's knowledge about drugs leaves a lot to be desired.

Conspiracy theorists think it suspicious that the UK government stockpiled millions of doses of Tamiflu to fight the bird flu pandemic of 2005, which never materialised, and the drug is now reaching its expiry date.

“Europe's drug watchdog recommended that the shelf life of Roche's Tamiflu should be extended to seven years from five years due to the outbreak of the new H1N1 virus.”

I don't know which is worse – the government doling out drugs to use them up, or ignoring the use by date we've always been told to observe carefully where prescription medicines are concerned.

And after all that, Tamiflu doesn’t cure swine flu. It relieves some of the symptoms, and lessens their duration by a day or so. Given that the illness is at present mild, I think I might choose to do without the drug and its possible side effects and just have another day and a half of flu.

Now for the vaccine. It is supposed to be being made now, and used in the autumn. But how safe will it be and who will get it?

Flu vaccines don't have a good history. In 1976 it was feared a swine flu pandemic was about to strike in the US. President Ford announced a mass vaccination program. But it was stopped after two months when it was discovered that 500 people had developed a paralyzing nerve disease called Guillain Barre syndrome. 30 died. The pandemic never materialised.

There have been reports in the past that the normal flu jab given each year to those over 65 has not cut the death rate from flu in the elderly.

A vaccine currently being prepared, and to be ready for use in the autumn, brings up the question of safety trials. The Scotsman online reported on 17th August that the extensive safety tests usually required in Europe before a new vaccine is used are being skipped - which I find somewhat worrying.

But moving on from the bad history and the lack of testing, there are other questions to be asked.

People are being diagnosed with swine flu over the phone if they say they have two or more symptoms, which GPs themselves admit can't be accurate. The internet carries many stories of misdiagnosis. I know one family whose 3 year old was diagnosed with swine flu, but who, when her worried father turned up at a hospital with her, was found to have a urinary tract infection.

So with diagnosis being hit or miss, we won't know who has definitely had the present virus. So we can't choose not to vaccinate people who already have immunity.

But hang on – surely this is all irrelevant, because it's not the current virus that's the problem. It's the one that might appear later, the mutated strain, which might cause a more serious illness, and which, according to NHS Choices, you are not protected against by having had the present strain.

How then can a vaccine created to protect us from the current strain be effective against the new one? Surely they can't be producing a vaccine to fight an as yet non-existent mutation of a virus?

Confused? So am I. It seems the more you find out about swine flu, the more questions there are.

I don't have the answers, but I think we should keep asking the questions and only let ourselves be medicated and vaccinated if we have, in the light of the facts available, made up our own minds that it's the right thing for us.