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EDITORIAL: The end is nigh, but don't panic

Judging from the apocalyptic language coming from excitable health professionals and WHO bureaucrats, the world is on the brink of a 21st century plague, possibly Armageddon.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍), in raising the WHO’s global health alert to Level 5, the second-highest level, said in a news release on the WHO Web site: “The biggest question, right now, is this: how severe will the pandemic be, especially now at the start?”

A good question, indeed, given that the number of confirmed cases of the crudely named “swine flu,” or H1N1, does not at this time remotely justify the alarmism that Chan spread during a Geneva press conference this week. “It is really all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic,” she said, apparently oblivious to the implications of such language.

Responsible governments prepare for contingencies such as SARS, avian flu and swine flu, and Chan is right when she states that the world has never been better prepared for global medical emergencies. What we lose as the world grows smaller — temporal and geographical barriers to disease disappear or are weakened because of air travel and accelerating mobility — we gain from the speed of communications and the expertise of the medical community.

But in the global medical bureaucracy, as in diplomacy, words are bullets. In the case of swine flu, Chan and her WHO underlings have been responsible for spreading panic over this outbreak. How foolish the WHO should feel, then, when it criticizes Egypt’s parliament for ordering the mass slaughter of pigs — a symptom of a global health alert system that is underdeveloped and, in this case, poorly utilized.

Swine flu may well have an impact on the human population, and new strains of lethal viruses should be — and will be — carefully scrutinized for their potential threat. Its spread should be reported on and actively contained, possibly at the temporary expense of travelers and local economies.

With the BBC quoting Professor Wendy Barclay, chair of influenza virology at Imperial College London, as saying “initial indications suggest there is nothing about the genetic make-up of the new virus which is a cause for particular concern,” and other British experts expressing doubts about the danger H1N1 poses, it is worth considering that hyperbole and assumptions of worst-case scenarios in the absence of hard evidence will help no one, not least in the developing world.

Even if H1N1 were to claim thousands of lives in every major country, its impact would still rank as innocuous compared with the trail of death left by the common cold, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS and hunger, not to mention manmade threats such as suicide, car accidents and war.

The WHO has previously shown that it is unable to elevate itself above the nastier aspects of international politics. China, in particular, has made WHO spokespeople look foolish as they cover for its refusal to take responsibility for poor hygiene and slapdash health policy in that country.

In a way, all this is understandable. Doctors were not meant to be politicians.

But it will be interesting to see what will happen to this organization’s reputation if it gets such a potentially serious situation so seriously wrong. Erring on the side of caution is one thing, but the alarmist handling of mass infection data at the expense of millions of ordinary people’s livelihoods is another thing altogether.
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