I feel that I am starting to detect a grumbling about how there has been an over-reaction to the threat of swine flu. People refusing to take vaccines, for example. And of course, whilst there has been an outbreak, the threatened pandemic hasn’t happened yet.
What I would like to see (but I’m not holding my breath) is a public “hey, this is great – we’ve seen this off together by doing the right thing – thank you experts, WHO, NHS, drug companies, local authorities for your action, advice, vaccine development and vaccination campaigns here. Well done!”.
I suspect we’re more likely to see a “look, those so-called experts got all excited over nothing – the pandemic never happened!”. And perhaps we’ll be a bit less likely to “catch it, bin it, kill it” next time around.
I am reminded (as we approach the end of this decade) of the fuss and bother around the “millennium bug” (remember that?). People prophesied apocalyptic societal collapse unless something was done. And of course no cataclysms occurred. But that was because something was actually done! At that time I was a Director in a division of a bank and I remember asking the IT Director whether the people fixing the bugs in the bank’s system were in fact finding things that would have led to systems falling over. She said “oh yes, definitely”.
I do hope there’s an opportunity to have a bit of a celebration once the threat of pandemic has passed. Public honours for the people who led the effort, that sort of thing.
Jonathan Flowers 