Could Swine Flu Panic Be Worse Than Outbreak Itself?

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Americans have been here before, the experts noted.

There were the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, fueling the public's fear that terrorists would unleash deadly smallpox germs on the population.

"People were stockpiling antibiotics. It didn't really result in a shortage, but it could have," said Dr. Dean Blumberg, associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California, Davis Children's Hospital.

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A rush for flu drugs has its own dangers, Blumberg said, because "people stockpiling Tamiflu or taking it inappropriately for the current swine flu might create [viral] resistance so the drug might not work well when we really need it."

Doomsday scenarios typically do not materialize, fortunately. Hysteria over the possible Y2K computer meltdown fizzled after the machines came through Jan. 1, 2000, relatively unscathed. And headlines over West Nile virus, SARS, Ebola virus and the bird flu have all faded, at least for now.

Often in a period of perceived crisis, people focus only on the benefit of certain precautionary measures, not the possible risks, Blumberg noted. The dangers of that approach were revealed in 1976 during the last H1N1 outbreak, when a federal government decision to vaccinate 43 million people against a different swine flu strain backfired.

Not only did the dreaded outbreak never materialize (illness never spread beyond 240 soldiers stationed at Fort Dix, N.J.) but some 500 Americans who did get vaccinated came down with a rare neurodegenerative condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which many experts believe was linked to the shot. Twenty-five of those 500 people died.

The current H1N1 outbreak remains far from a "worst-case scenario" with most illnesses still mild, even though they're widespread.

However, according to the BMJ article, medical laboratories are already straining under the sheer number of specimens they're being asked to test -- many from patients who ordinarily wouldn't have even considered a flu test before.

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