It is hard to believe that 12 months ago the world was in the grip of the H1N1 epidemic. Vaccine and antiviral manufacturing facilities were working at full tilt to meet demand from governments and health authorities, and the sight of people walking the streets wearing – largely useless – face masks was not unusual.
We will never know exactly how many or how few people actually were infected. Some had the disease without even knowing it while others were diagnosed over the telephone and may well not have contracted the virus at all.
In the event, it was all something of an anticlimax, and as often happens when something doesn’t live up to the hype, people start apportioning blame.
Two reports into the handling of the pandemic – one by the BMJ and the other by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) – accused the World Health Organisation of a range of offences, from scaremongering, changing the definition of a pandemic and overreacting to a relatively mild virus, to being manipulated by greedy pharma manufacturers trying to boost their profits in tough economic times, and putting the emphasis on medical intervention rather than hand-washing and respiratory hygiene.
Hindsight, of course, is a wonderful thing – especially when vast sums were spent on stockpiling vaccines and on antiviral drugs that were never used and had to be disposed of because their shelf-life expired. At a time when healthcare budgets are under enormous strain that is a particularly hard bullet to bite.
It is right that questions should be asked, because that is how lessons are learned and no doubt things will be done a little differently next time.
But there are other questions that should be considered. What if the virus hadn’t been relatively mild? What if the declaration of a pandemic had been delayed? What if the virus had mutated into something more serious and less treatable? What if the outbreak had been played down to avoid public alarm? What if governments hadn’t made contingency plans to deal with a large number of seriously ill or dying patients?
This is one of those situations where those in authority are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from the pandemic is that the world got off lightly – this time.