It is beginning to seem that the massive volume of speculation about the potentially catastrophic impact of H1N1 influenza virus, first discovered in Mexico, outweighs by a factor of many times the actual danger the disease actually poses. It would, however, be entirely unreasonable to blame the World Health Organization, Mexican health officials or anyone else in an official position for unleashing a panic that proved to be uncalled for. The truth is that these people did what they had to.

If, indeed, this H1N1 flu strain proves to be mild and no more or less deadly than the influenzas which kill some half a million people worldwide each year (with little reaction from health professionals nor significantly the media), there are still some valuable lessons to be learned from the urgent messages that have gone out over the last 10 days and the way in which people have responded to them.

Underpinning the general reaction has been the stark and it would seem unchallengeable medical prediction that one day a virus is going to attack the globe that will overcome all anti-biotic defenses and cause significant loss of life. As one eminent professor said at the start of the Mexican outbreak, “It is not a question of ‘if’ a pandemic will happen, merely ‘when’ it will happen.” Then, of course, he went on to say that it was not clear if the present manifestation was in fact the inevitable ruinous infection. It was, he said, too early to tell.

And it has indeed been the refusal of medical professionals to be rushed into firm judgments that has underpinned the general unease. Intellectually we may recognize that sound science requires time. However, emotionally we want to know immediately how bad the threat is and what we can do to protect our families and ourselves.

Into this vacuum of knowledge stepped the media. Every medical expert with any knowledge at all of the spread of infectious diseases was dragged, sometimes clearly reluctant, in front of the cameras. Many reporters demanded clear answers but if, as invariably happened, they received only “maybes” and “mights”, they were not done. They turned to statisticians and asked them to transform these indefinite responses into definite statistics, indicating the probability that the world might be gripped by deadly contagion. And one word cropped up repeatedly in these reports: “Pandemic”. It was originally used by the WHO in the very precise sense of something that affects a very wide area, possibly indeed the globe.

However, in the hands of some unthinking journalists, pandemic was used as if it meant deadly and all embracing. Perhaps the first part of the word was too much like “panic” and the second like “condemn”.

If after the alarmist reporting of SARS, bird flu and indeed AIDS, each of which was supposed to lay waste the developed world, Mexican flu turns out to be another limited outbreak, many may dismiss all such future outbreaks as unthreatening. But that would be wrong. The main thing is that people should always think for themselves.

Man and nature against a people

As disasters go, Myanmar’s rulers have not just compounded the effect of Cyclone Nargis, they dwarf it, said The Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:

A year after Cyclone Nargis struck southern Myanmar, killing at least 140,000 and convulsing the lives of 2.4 million others, not only is life not getting any better for those living in the Irrawaddy Delta, it is about to get very much worse.

The 500,000 or so survivors who still huddle in the makeshift shelters they have fashioned from bamboo poles, palm and fraying tarpaulin are about to be slapped by nature once more as imminent monsoon rains threaten to wash away what pass for their new homes.

Meanwhile, the world, distracted by having to tackle its greatest financial headaches in half a century, has turned its attention elsewhere. And it has taken its checkbook with it.

This has been a natural disaster made doubly cruel by the callous malevolence of a junta that has always put political calculation above the well-being of its people. Myanmar’s military rulers, who have made a skill of accelerating the nation’s poverty, certainly compounded the impact of the cyclone.

Laura Bush, then America’s first lady, pointed out a few days after the cyclone had struck that “although they were aware of the threat, Myanmar’s state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm’s path”. For three weeks after the cyclone’s arrival Myanmar’s generals refused even to take calls from Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, or to respond to his urgent pleas for Burma to admit international aid. It is emblematic of the junta’s despotism that 21 civilians are serving prison sentences of up to 35 years for providing aid to victims of the cyclone without permission from the regime. As disasters go, Myanmar’s rulers have not just compounded the effect of Cyclone Nargis, they dwarf it.