By Dr. Rob Tremblay

At the risk of speaking too soon, it looks like the flu scare from H1N1 will not turn into the serious pandemic that many forecast would occur.

It will likely be impossible to determine if the pandemic has failed to materialize because there was not a high probability that it would have occurred with this virus, or that it failed to materialize because of the steps that were put in place to contain it.

I know that some of the travel that I had scheduled was cancelled as a result of these concerns.

It is always much easier to comment on the appropriateness of official reaction once the anticipated crisis has passed. Because the first reports from Mexico suggested an unusually high rate of death in infected people and that these occurred in people who would generally be considered at low risk of developing serious disease, consequently, health officials were more concerned than usual.

They acted quite well by not fostering an atmosphere of panic, and by giving useful recommendations and advice. It would be refreshing if some broadcasters cast the same discriminating eyes on their own conduct?

One of the disappointing aspects of this outbreak was the dogged insistence by various media in referring to this virus as the ‘swine flu’ virus.

Many in the media continued to do this even as the WHO recommended that it not be called ‘swine flu’ rather H1N1. One reason for this recommendation was that the speculative link to pigs was not proven and, as it turns out, does not exist.

In fact in retrospect, it looked like pigs were more at risk from infected people than the reverse.

The other reason was that using the term ‘swine flu’ implied that contact with or eating pork would also carry a risk of exposure to the influenza virus.

As a result, some of the victims in this situation were hog farmers.

Even before the outbreak of apparent human origin of H1N1 influenza in the hog barn in central Alberta, inaccurate information had spread that eating pork could lead to exposure to influenza. The price of market hogs fell.

This represented a substantial unintended financial consequence of widespread use of the term, "swine flu".

Since pigs and pork played no role in exposing people to infection with the H1N1 influenza virus, implying a link to pigs didn’t even seem to make any difference in the health official’s ability to control the spread of the flu.

In fact, it may have distracted people away from the true risks for exposure and transmission.