Swine Flu Stories

August 17th, 2009

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Posted by ChrisG at 3:13 pm

Looks like the swine flu counter-narrative I listed as missing a couple of weeks ago is now emerging.

The government rejected advice from its expert advisers on swine flu, who said there was no need for the widespread use of Tamiflu and suggested that the public should simply be told to take paracetamol.

You could put this down to assumptions in government about how best to handle risk amplification effects, e.g. the way in which people’s interpretation of the subtexts of communications about risks and uncertainties often have a positive feedback effect, leading them to see said risks as much serious than how they were originally depicted. “Informing the public about risk” therefore becomes, in part, a matter of second-guessing how people will interpret what is not said.

Here, the government appears to have assumed that the public are, essentially, wilful and infantile consumers who will (once the “risk management” approach discussed in my earlier post has failed, and the lurgy has claimed them) clamour for whatever headline treatment can be thrown at them. So, to ensure that things don’t get out of hand, you simply tell people to wash their hands, mention that the (generally undiscussed) consequences of falling ill can be severe for certain groups, and then carpet bomb the UK with Tamiflu anyway – filling nicely the gap between the “individual as rational, dispassionate manager of personal risk” and “individual as shriekingly irrational” bases.

A few mixed messages there, then.

As it became clear that the current outbreak only had mild symptoms, the committee recommended that antivirals should only be given to those in high risk categories, like pregnant women or people with existing respiratory illnesses. It suggested the government explain to people that they would not be given medicine they did not need and should use off-the- shelf flu treatments.

A story about the risk of viral resistance adding to the prospective dangers of a second wave of flu in the autumn is now undoubtedly waiting to be told in more detail, and more stridently.

The problem with the “politics of what works”, as has often been noted, is how it becomes a matter of tinkering behind closed doors. And, once politicians and their advisors have cloaked themselves in a mantle of generalised “expertise”, it becomes harder than ever for them to admit that there are limits to this somewhat nebulous knowledge. And this results in both more (rather than less) suspicion, and attribution of nefarious motives, and worse policy decisions, with more unintended consequences. Which politicians respond to by being more and more cagey, and trying to manage the situation with nervous, ad hoc gestures.

In other words, if we have only the “politics of what works”, it’s a shorter journey than ever to the politics of “erm, will this do?”