Swine Flu - Truth is out there - the stigma

I have spent the last 5 days worrying about my 4 year old daughter- my youngest daughter has suspected swine flu, now i know everyone will gasp in horror at this.

It started last friday with her having a runny nose and temperature and then developed into the watery eyes, now as parents we have seen this a lot and there isnt a month that goes by where aimee hasnt caught something. It seemed like a normal cold thing going on until she started saying that her legs were aching, so we decided for the best to get her checked out on monday,

Now I dont know why but in this country we never seemed prepared or ready for anything out of the ordinary, every winter proves this when we have snow.

So after calling the surgery and as soon as we said that our daughter had cold/flu like symptoms they ended the conversation bluntly with ' we dont deal with this, you must phone this number'

so thought ok called the number and had to give them the symptoms, and they said the doctor will call back. 6hours later and countless calls before the doctor calls back. And he then summises to say he's not sure as all the symptoms are similar and so alike, AND THEY ARE NOT TESTING ANYMORE. so he said here is a special code and you must go to this pharmacy at this special time and the treatment will be handed over to you, it was all very cloak and dagger as he said there was only 2 places left in aylesbury that had stock left. So I arrived at the pharmacy at 9pm in the evening!!! and there were at least 150 people in the queue already, so me being nosey i enquired if everyone was here for Tamiflu and they all said yes, I heard stories in the queue that 1 guy had to ring the bell on his surgery then go and sit back in his car with the windows done up and the doctor came out to the car to check him with a face mask on.

After being in the queue for a further 2hours as they only had 2 people in the pharmacy serving that said we would have come back as they couldnt make the prescriptions up quick enough for us, or they had'nt recieved the official fax to dispense it. So thankfully i was one of the lucky ones that they managed to do and get the official fax, the instructions were even worse, you have to be quarantined for 5 days and I was now a flu buddy as i didnt have the symptoms but my wife had a sore throat so she was deemed with it as well.

Now i dont know if there is an underground epidemic going on that nobody is shouting about or things are not being explained clearly enough. Yes there are people dying of it but they keep saying these people had underlying health issues - is this true and what are these health issues, im pretty sure my daughter has only got a viral infection that has been passed round, but surely there has to be a system where they have to test as it seems ridiculous just to give out the treatment willy nilly to anyone who has a sore throat as that what was happening.

Why is it that our government and health service cannot get it right, I know they are overwhelmed at the moment but surely the testing will alleviate this problem a bit like a triage nurse, Aimee thankfully is getting better as her temperature is going down but as I had to mention it to my employees and my wife had to talk to pre-school, pre-school annoyed me as they said they had 2 cases last week but didnt want to mention it as they didnt want to cause a panic, how irresponsible!!!!!!! surely it is up to the parents to make that decision to let their child go to preschool if there was a suspected case, surely enough 2 days later preschool put a notice up at the door to say they have had suspected swine flu cases - bolt, horse springs to mind.

Now I talked to work and informed them and told them not to worry as i think it was just a cold but gave them the truth of what the doctors had said, as you can imagine they were all worried they were going to catch it, but at least they said they were prepared for it now and to look out for it and they all agreed that it had been hyped up into a frenzy but thanked me for informing them. Now i had a few appontments this week and i informed them of the situation and all of them told me to stay away!!! which i thought is the wrong attitude as it was just feeding the rumour mills even more but it made me think how stupid we really are to let this get to us and to believe the papers and the news, if there was no mention of it in the news we would all think this was just another cold and surgerys could get on as normal and not be inundated and they could test.

So what is the truth about this, how many people are actually dying from this and how does it compare to normal flu, why cant the goverment do the vaccine now as they are saying it will get worse come september, I for one am carrying on as normal and will probably get 'swine flu' as will everbody on this planet but i am not going to panic over it as we all have to die of something and I for one know it is not going to be this!! So people think positive, dont read or listen to the news, there is a lot to live for so lets get on with it.