PUBLIC HEALTH
H1N1 reaction product of hype or prudence?
November 20, 2009
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Joseph Hall
HEALTH REPORTER
At the end of April, the world stopped, mid-stride, and slowly turned its eyes toward Mexico.
For a month the deaths there had been quietly mounting. Twenty people, 60, 100. Mostly they were young and healthy. Mostly they were felled in days.
Within weeks the severe respiratory illness – quickly identified as a new and virulent form of swine flu – would spread to pockets across the globe, in a classic pattern of pandemic.
But fear spread faster. And unlike the H1N1 virus – which proved a relatively mild pestilence – that fear would grow in its potency.
Sometime in the past week, H1N1 hit its peak across Canada. And from this infectious apex, we can look forward with a growing consensus.
Far from apocalyptic, H1N1 was a mild form of influenza, by almost any measure. It will have killed just 200 to 300 Canadians by the time this largest wave peters out completely in mid-December. That's far fewer than the thousands who die every year in this country from commonplace seasonal varieties.
Looking back, however, the picture is murkier.
Did public health officials overplay those relatively innocuous dangers? Was the hyperventilating coverage of the ailment justified? And was there, reasonably, anything to fear in the first place?
Two of the country's top public health officials weigh in on the issue today – with very different perspectives about the governmental and media roll out of H1N1:
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DR. RICHARD SCHABAS
Months of dire swine flu warnings were a dangerous, disruptive cry of "wolf" for an ailment Canadian health officials knew would be a mild, manageable beast.
That's the pointedly caustic judgement of Dr. Richard Schabas, a one-time provincial health officer who says flu experts knew in July that H1N1 would hold little threat for Canadians this fall.
How they larded H1N1 facts with fear
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DR. DONALD LOW
Dr. Donald Low is medical director of Ontario's public health laboratories and chief microbiologist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. He's also one of the widely hailed "heroes" of Toronto's SARS battle six years ago, and says he learned the value then of keeping a pipeline open to the media as an epidemic unfolds.
So as the century's first pandemic reared up in April, and then made its fall return, Canada's public health apparatus was poised and pleased to speak to the media often and at length as the disease caught hold.
Better to be scared safe than sorry
Toronto Star