We Need to be Inoculated Against Outbreaks of Panic

Mostly, however, it's yet another dreary confirmation of how media organisations love to turn concern into panic into audiences into profit, and how governments, when they see a big running story, want to position themselves flatteringly and busily at the heart of it, when the people at the heart of it really ought to be health professionals.

You wouldn't know it from the already feverish speculation, but there is no reason to imagine that this flu – and 36,000 people a year die of flu on average – is any more dangerous than any other flu. For Britons, in the short-to-medium term, this means a different winter flu shot to the one that vulnerable people already get, and a few other simple precautions. As Michael O'Leary of Ryanair so robustly put it, "the slum-dwellers" are the people at real risk.

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