Have you ever seen this experiment? Volunteers one by one were put in a waiting room with people they believe to be other volunteers but are in fact actors who have been told to sit still and calm. The volunteer thinks they are waiting to be told what the test is, but in reality they are already in it. After a short while smoke begins to waft under the office door; gradually at first, but then in ever greater quantities, filling the room. All logic says there’s a fire. But what do you do? Do you go to look, or press the fire alarm? You mention it but the others are sitting calmly. They aren’t worried, so why are you? You don’t want to look like a paranoid, do you?
The majority do nothing.
The experiment was devised after a fire killed numerous people in a restaurant, most of whom had stayed calmly seated eating their chips. No one shouted “Fire, everyone out!” and so no one acted. In the 9/11 attacks at the WTC some offices left fast but others ambled even with the alarm – the average time being 5-8 minutes – and some took up to 40 minutes; finishing emails, logging off, shutting down, tidying up. No one wanted to be seen to panic, to be seen as over-reacting, or acting disproportionately.
That’s where we’re at now with swine flu.
We know it’s going to be bad, and that action now would have significant effects later as viruses grow exponentially, but no one wants to step out of the group-think for fear of being branded a scare monger, a paranoid over-reacting. They mention the threat, then backtrack with the word “but” and some form of qualification that brands the whole phrase unintelligible or meaningless.
So we get mangled advice such as that for pregnant women and young children to avoid unnecessary crowds but carry on as normal – a complete contradiction.
And bizarre statements like that swine flu might kill 60,000 but we shouldn’t worry as normal flu kills an average of 10,000 a year anyway – as if a 6-times higher than average mortality rate isn’t serious.
Or the tendency to say the patient “had underlying illnesses” whenever a death is reported – very reassuring I’m sure except to those of us who have or know someone who has underlying illnesses and rather insulting too, as if it makes the death somehow lesser.
Their mangled messages mean people are risking other people’s health and lives by travelling, going out, going to Pharmacies, GP’s surgeries and A&E whilst ill.
Now mass hysteria is not going to help anything, but the best way to avoid a panic is to be on top of the situation, calmly taking action and being straight with the public. From the very beginning however the government’s response has been poor, based as ever with this government on the triumph of hopeless optimism over reality and the belief we are all stupid.
There is no screening at airports (surely a good idea to ram home the message of being vigilant at least); no clear message of “Stay at home if you’re ill” (something that can’t be stressed enough); no real sense of seriousness (quite the contrary in fact). Instead we are endlessly told “Don’t panic!” by people who seem to have no grip on the situation.
But being told “Don’t panic!” in an ever more Lance-Corporal Jones manner as the situation deteriorates and no action is taken just makes the panic worse. What we need to calm fears and save lives – and needed earlier, but better late than never – is action to contain and slow the virus. It’s quite simple really: we are worried about the virus, so do something and we’ll feel less worried.
We know there will be a vaccine by Autumn, at least enough for the most at risk groups, so it is not a case of trying to hold back the tide Canute like forever. A nice managed retreat would suffice; the longer the spike of cases is held back, the better. Scientists claim closing schools could cut the number of swine flu cases 13 to 17 per cent overall and by between 38 and 45 per cent at the peak of the outbreak, stifling transmission and buying time to produce vaccines. But instead they switched from “containment” to “treatment” phases – as if you can’t ask people to stay home, close infected schools and treat people at the same time – and so now the UK is a global swine flu hotspot. From being behind Spain, we now have 9-time smore cases. Ditto France and Germany.
From the failure to set up the Flu Hotline in the two months since the WHO gave us warning and abandoning containment too soon (and on a UK wide basis when some areas hadn’t even reported cases), to the poor statistical gathering (in the meaningless vast “regions” rather than boroughs) and mangled advice, the government has failed us on flu.
It seems they’re still in that waiting room.
