LA HISTERIA sobre la gripe porcina me está sacando de mis casillas. No soy el único:

How many times are we going to cry wolf over these things? Remember bird flu? The rush to stock up on Tamiflu? Gee didn't the Swiss drug maker Roche do well out of that one.

Sars anyone? The Millennium Bug? Let's face it, we love a good crisis and the media enjoys it more than anyone. Scaring the pants off the public is great fun, and sells newspapers.

So let's just get this latest crisis straight. "Up to'' 80 people have died in Mexico from a variant of Influenza A, which is being dubbed swine flu. A bunch of Americans and Canadians are thought to have caught it, though none of them have died or are even very sick.

Ten Kiwi kids apparently have the "deadly new swine flu'' after a school trip to Mexico recently. So far they're all OK too.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a minute that influenza isn't a nasty virus. Or that health authorities shouldn't take precautions until we know more about it.

But let's have some perspective, shall we? Every year, the flu kills an estimated 500,000 people around the world. There are up to five million cases. People die and are hospitalised right here in New Zealand from the flu every year as well.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Más:

The fact of the matter is, swine flu has been hopping from pigs to humans for decades, sometimes causing disease, sometimes not. According to a study done by the Centers for Disease Control, 76% of swine exhibitors at a 1988 county fair had antibodies in their bloodstream indicating a prior swine flu infection, even though the exhibitors showed no signs of illness.  There was also an outbreak of swine flu among military recruits in Fort Dix, New Jersey in 1976, causing severe illness in 13 soldiers and one death.  With this current swine flu outbreak, we simply don’t know what to expect.  There’s been no reliable pattern.  Some people have gotten mildly ill, and some have died.  Some have probably been transiently infected and didn’t even notice.

But I don’t think we need to worry about this pandemic too much, because there’s one thing to keep in mind when news of a unique flu strain breaks:  perspective.  As of this writing, 80 people in Mexico have succumbed to swine flu.  By comparison, the CDC estimates that 36,000 people in the United States die each year of influenza-related illnesses.  And in spite of this, we in the medical community still have a hard time convincing people to get their flu shots.  If you’re not afraid of influenza, then you shouldn’t be afraid of the swine flu.  Even in the event that someone gets infected with swine flu, we have medications with demonstrated effectiveness against the strain that’s currently active.