Should we really be worried about swine flu?

This week has been the week of swine flu. It came from Mexico, spread to the USA and then moved overseas, including to the UK. As I write there are apparently 230 possible cases in the UK alone. A worrying business then?

Well perhaps not. It is not long ago that the world was in panic over the SARS outbreak. I remember getting off a plane at the time and having to fill in reams of paperwork before I could get off the plane. Luckily in this case it soon petered out.

Then there was the widepspread alarm over Bird flu, where we were warned this virus could cover the globe and cause savage destruction. I remember watching the news, where a map was shown plotting the advance of this terrible affliction, but once again it disappeared and was soon forgotten about.

Now it is the turn of swine flu. It is obviously a tragedy that in Mexico, eight people have died, but soldiers die all the time in places like Afghanistan and get little mention on the news. Just because the cause was flu, does this make these deaths more important?

Of course this is an irrational argument, but the "level 5" danger that we are told we are in could alarm people. It should be remembered that only nine people have died so far from the disease and most patients have responded well to treatment.

So the British government's advertisement campaign introduced today, could make things worse. "Catch it, kill it, bin it" is the catchy slogan for stopping germs spreading, but surely stopping your snot hitting people is something most people would do anyway. Do we really need the government to tell us how to sneeze?

The distribution of leaflets is another tool in their armoury. They give information about the virus and how to combat it. This may all be a little pointless. The World Health Organisation have admitted that it is now impossible to contain the outbreak, so why do we need all of this advice?

By giving people too much information, there is a strong risk that people will worry unnecessarily about catching swine flu, and that will not help the situation at all. By trying to help people, the government may well have made things worse.

Another negative for this advertising campaign is the cost. Surely distributing leaflets to every home in the UK and making TV and radio adverts is an expensive operation. At a time when the country is deep in recession, this could appear misguided.

So far there have been 212 confirmed cases of swine flu across the world and nine deaths. Without twenty four hour mass media, one must ask the question; would this be such a big story? Twenty four hour news is generally a good thing, as it gets the news to people fast, but when there is little news to update a story this can cause problems.

Taking the example of swine flu, the news channels have filled their air-time with spurious suggestions from so-called experts about what "might" happen. The word "might" is key here, as nobody really knows what will happen and conjecture is certainly not news.

Of course swine flu may end up killing us all, making the government's leaflets useless, but if most of us survive, will Gordon Brown have saved us from certain armageddon? I think not. Even the politicians can not control our sneezes, however much they would like to.