I haven't yet received my leaflet from the government, telling me what contribution I can make to the containment of swine flu. Happily, I don’t need it, because I’m fantastically well up on the H1N1 virus. That’s partly because I’m one of the small number of parents in Britain who have been involved in controlling the spread of the illness.
One of my sons attends the London primary school that has closed because of the as yet modest outbreak in Britain. He has displayed no symptoms, and it is now eight days since he was in the building, so it’s pretty much certain that he’s never going to. Not that the building was likely to have been harboring any infection anyway. Neither of the children who attend the school and developed mild swine flu last weekend — from a sibling at another closed school — was ill while they were on the premises.
Even so, my son and his schoolmates yesterday began a 10-day course of Tamiflu, as a further precaution, on the advice of the Health Protection Agency. At an individual level, I don’t think there is any need for my son to take this powerful neuraminidase inhibitor, which comes with the usual list of unpleasant-sounding possible side effects. The chances of him having the virus are vanishingly small, if any, and even if he did develop swine flu, he’s not a vulnerable person, and would more than likely recover with only a useful natural immunity to further, perhaps more virulent, outbreaks to show for it. At the “herd’ level, though, administering this potion is the right thing to do. Taking a vanishingly small risk with your own child’s health is one thing. Taking a vanishingly small risk that your son may, therefore, possibly, become part of a chain that somewhere leads to calamity is quite another. Essentially, my son and his schoolmates are taking Tamiflu so that others, maybe many others, won’t have to. Widespread use of Tamiflu is not desirable, as it’s a great way of creating a resistant virus.
But my son has siblings, too, at other schools that are not closed. They are not in quarantine, and are not receiving medication. They are of no danger to anyone, because they quite definitely have not been exposed to the virus, either via respiration or surface contact.
But the spread of swine flu wasn’t my worry. It was the spread of fear. When my seven-year-old came home from school on Wednesday (I did keep him off for one day, just to be ultra-sure there was no risk of infection), he said: “Everyone thinks I’ve got swine flu!” He had shrugged the teasing off, unruffled.
Other children have been subjected to more than gentle teasing, though. When British schoolchildren were first diagnosed, they and their parents were happy to cooperate with the media. One Devon girl was even broadcast on the telly, being questioned about why she was crying. “Because I don’t want to get it,” she whimpered. Yet the poor child was infected only with the belief that swine flu was utterly new, totally unpredictable, completely uncontrollable, and horribly deadly.
There has been a lot of speculation, even among scientists, about how H1N1 is a “wholly novel” virus, because it’s a fresh and unpredictable combination against which we may have no immunity. Fair enough, that was one of the bleakest of very many possible scenarios. But there was not enough context. Every human baby, for example, is a new and unpredictable combination. It’s possible that it might grow up to become Hitler or Stalin or Stepdad P, or just poorly or depressed or a bit weird. But it’s best by far to assume that the new baby not going to grow up to be so very much more dangerous or miserable than most other people, and give it all the care and attention that you can muster in the meantime. Likewise all of that banging on about 1918 is unhelpful, because in 1918 there was no World Health Organization, no NHS, no Health Protection Agency, no Tamiflu and no ability quickly to produce new vaccine. The idea that we’re “overdue” for a terrible pandemic also omits these changed factors.
Now, after a couple of weeks of wild speculation and sensational claims, some of those on the front line, among people who can contain the virus by applying good sense and civil responsibility — its potential or actual carriers and their families — are being treated like the enemy. Which is surely prima facie evidence that somewhere along the line, the tone of the public debate was misjudged.
