The great swine flu disaster

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before on this blog, but I’ve recently mastered the art of time travel. I’ve invented my own Wellsian time machine with bits of piano wire, a Halfords car battery and an old Nokia phone and I’m actually writing this post in the summer of 2010. There’s not much to report from the future, to be honest. Things are pretty much ticking along as normal – except for Gordon Brown winning that unexpected landslide election victory, obviously, after he single-handedly saved the world from being destroyed by an asteroid. Oh, and the Tories were routed and have been replaced as the main opposition by the Top Gear party, led by Jeremy Clarkson. Anyway, I was at a bit of a loose end so I thought I would sort through some of my yellowing copies of old newspapers from the summer of 2009, when everyone was getting very worried about that dreadful swine flu pandemic. Here is a selection of the headlines from that period:

SCHOOLS MAY SHUT TO BEAT SWINE FLU: CALLS FOR PANDEMIC TSAR (THE MIRROR)

PIG IGNORANT: NEW SWINE FLU ADVICE LINES ARE MANNED BY MIGRANTS WHO BARELY SPEAK ENGLISH (DAILY STAR)

HE'S ONLY DOING THIS TO ESCAPE SWINE FLU IN MEXICO: WHAT LEAGUE 2 CLUBS THINK OF SVEN (THE SUN)

SWINE FLU IS ‘BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN A GENERATION FOR THE NHS’ (THE TIMES)

SWINE FLU THREATENS DEFLATION SLUMP: GDP COULD PLUNGE BY 7.5PC (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

IF YOU GET SWINE FLU ON HOLS: BRITS COULD BE STRANDED FOR WEEKS BY BUG (DAILY STAR)

£90BN SWINE FLU ADDS TO RECESSION: SICK WORKERS COULD TIP BRITAIN INTO DEFLATION (THE SUN)

AIRLINES TO TURN AWAY ‘SWINE FLU’ PASSENGERS: SNEEZING TOURISTS WILL NEED A DOCTOR'S NOTE TO FLY (THE TIMES)

CLUES FROM 1918 GRAVES WHICH MAY SAVE US ALL: RACE FOR SWINE FLU CURE AS PUPILS TRAPPED ABROAD (THE PEOPLE)

CHURCHGOERS ARE URGED NOT TO SHAKE HANDS IN SWINE FLU ALERT (THE MIRROR)

20,000 CASES OF SWINE FLU - AND ON TARGET FOR A MILLION (SUNDAY EXPRESS)

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY SWINE FLU (MAIL ON SUNDAY)

BECKHAM NIECE IN SWINE FLU SHOCK (THE MIRROR)

DON'T SEND CHILDREN TO SWINE FLU PARTIES, PARENTS WARNED (DAILY MAIL)

WIMBLEDON: FOUR BALL BOYS SENT HOME WITH SWINE FLU (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

CELEBS’ JUNGLE FEVER: SWINE FLU MAY WIPE OUT HIT REALITY SHOW (DAILY STAR)

SWINE FLU DOES WHAT THE NAZIS COULDN'T: CLOSE ETON (INDEPENDENT)

Some people here have been saying that, in retrospect, we all got a bit overexcited about something that, in the vast majority of cases, was best treated with some Lemsip and a bit of shuteye. But I say phooey. You can’t be too careful these days, and without the vigilance of the Fourth Estate who knows what havoc this potentially deadly virus could have wreaked.

Last week I also used my time machine to return briefly to 2009 so I could park it outside Broadcasting House and appear on Thinking Allowed on Radio 4, which (unless you’re reading this in 2010, like me) is still available for a few days on iPlayer at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lpc8f/Thinking_Allowed_22_07_2009/

Mundane quote for the day: ‘There is something very English in the marriage of boredom and catastrophe, and the England that existed immediately after the Second World War appears to have carried that manner rather well, as if looking over its shoulder to notice that lightning had just struck a teacup. Reading the work of V.S. Pritchett or the absconded Auden, you pick up the notion that Europe had just come through a spell of bad weather, as though the only important question emerging from the war was about how it might have affected the course of English normality.’ - Andrew O’Hagan