Swine Flu...

Hmm. Several rants ago, I was giving off about the new Black Death that we were in the midst of.
You will recall that I was somewhat underwhelmed by it all.
So here we are some months later. Admittedly we have had some deaths, as we do when we see flu outbreaks. It would appear that we could even identify an at risk group, namely the usual suspects plus under 5s and pregnant ladies..
And so we leapt (?) into action. Millions of doses of Tamiflu given to millions of people who probably didn't have it..and even if they did, had not much more than a bad cold. Of those, how many courses were taken, either at all or partly...
"Tell you what Doc, I had two whole days off work and I only took one of those tablets, cos they made me feel terrible."
Could we give the vaccine away...er no. I could have walked around my patch with a sandwich board and it would have made no difference..our vaccination clinics...wastelands !!
And as for the vaccine. "Its just like normal vaccine and made in the same way..."
Rubbish. It comes in one vial, has to be made up, it's bloody white for God's sake..and your arm aches like buggery for two days afterwards..
"It's been tested"..Yeah, on tens of thousands of NHS front line staff !
And so it went on. Total hysteria and totally overblown
A Liverpool study of 30 pts given Tamiflu by the Flu "no bloody" help line, discovered that only three actually had swine flu. Of the patients given Tamiflu, who weren't in hospital (One with Malaria and two with meningitis..I kid you not), only half had bothered taking it.
At the height of this, prior to the nirvana that was some untrained bloke on a phone in Stevenage, my partners and I were only fielding about five extra calls a day each.
I didn't need a multi-million pound waste of time, and my patients would have been managed better if I'd got on with it.
The result..loads of Tamiflu used when not needed, more of it lying around expiring and Christ knows how much vaccine will be lost.
Apologists state that I'd have been looking pretty foolish if there had been a genuine epidemic that needed all this...........not convinced, and frankly if there had been, secondary care would have been swamped anyway..look what happens on a bank holiday during a cold snap !!
Any wonder we're bankrupt as a country..
I'll start on Foundation Trusts, PBC and Payment by results next time