Time To Send The Chicken Littles To The Slaughterhouse?

Another day, another embarrassing ‘Ooops!’ from government ‘experts’:

Deaths from swine flu could be less than half the annual toll from the usual winter flu, it emerged last night.

The news came as an expert accused ministers of an 'alarmist' response to the outbreak.

This government? Alarmist? Surely not…

Sir Liam is facing growing criticism that he caused panic as the virus turns out to be much milder than originally feared.

The media should certainly be getting some of that criticism, too, for eagerly swallowing everything the government handed out…

And the ‘back to school epidemic’ they were predicting?

That doesn’t seem likely now either:

Sir Liam said he had been looking carefully at data from Scotland, where schools returned from their summer break earlier than in England.

Experts have predicted a surge in the number of swine flu cases once schools and universities go back across the UK.

But Sir Liam said 'there is no suggestion of any significant upturn in Scotland', adding that England was unlikely to see a peak 'before the second half of October'.

Perhaps Sir Liam would be better off at the Met Office…

Peter Doshi, a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said actions were taken 'in an environment of high public attention and low scientific certainty'.

He called for a new framework for dealing with epidemics, saying a single, one- size-fits-all public health strategy cannot respond to the 'vastly different challenges' posed by the different types of threat in the world.

Sorry, Peter. ‘One size fits all’ is this – and almost any other – government’s approach to just about anything…