Ignore the swine flu scaremongers and just get on with your life

THERE’S a sort of poetic justice to it: having written back in April about the danger to mental health arising from swine flu hysteria, I have now come down with the bug myself. Perhaps 100,000 people in the State have likewise been struck.

How does it feel? Somewhere between mild and severe, I guess. I’ve a headache, a sore throat and am feeling a bit listless. Let’s say I’m moderately ill.

Moderate is, however, very far from how you would describe the reaction to a flu strain that continues to dominate the headlines. The Department of Health’s chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan, calls it “a national public health emergency”. Are you scared yet? And, if not, why not? If you haven’t been panicked, is it because this “emergency”, this plague, has, so far, killed precisely 10 people in the Republic and fewer still in Northern Ireland? And most of those who do die are already suffering some other health-related condition.