UAE winter: Doctors record spike in cold, flu cases amid rains, weather change

Swine Flu Outbreak

We were standing round the other evening – 'we' being what was left of a small dinner party – it was getting late and it was the time when the bubbles of the party have dissolved and the agreeable strangers have left and the few old friends tend to poke the fire and freshen the drinks and turn to more serious talk than a dinner party allows.

It was the night after Ronald Reagan had surprisingly winded President Ford and, incidentally, made fools out of those foreign correspondents who are inexperienced or conceited enough to itch to tell you what's going to happen instead of what did. While President Ford was saying that he had known happier days in his life, I was just getting in the English papers and there were the confident, foolish prophecies, 'Reagan's Campaign in Ribbons, Reagan a Dead Duck' and so on. 

Well, we didn't get round to Reagan for some time. Somebody deplored the demonstrable fact that none of the candidates so far has gone into the issues with any thoughtfulness or detail. And this prompted an historian present to say, 'Well, name me an issue! What is a typical political issue in 1976?' We mumbled words like jobs, inflation, the economy, détente – which is a word, by the way, the president says we should forget from now on. If the historian had asked his question 24 hours later – what is a typical political issue? – I should have said the death of a 19-year-old soldier at Fort Dix, New Jersey. 

I hasten to explain that the presidential candidates are very unlikely to go around the country bemoaning the death of that soldier or using his death as a political club. But they won't do it only because President Ford got ahead of them. 

On Thursday, he asked Congress for $135 million for a special project and I would not like to be the congressman who votes against it. Mr Ford proposes to vaccinate the entire population of the United States against the new influenza virus which killed that 19-year-old soldier at Fort Dix. I've put that a little unfairly. That last sentence was mine, not the president's. But nothing like this mass vaccination has been attempted before and it's being done because of the appearance of this new influenza virus. 

There was, as we all know, a very unpleasant form of influenza around last winter and, in this country, it came to touch most of the states from California to New England. The strain was known as A/Victoria. Well, the army camp in New Jersey came into the picture after a sharp outbreak of influenza there in February. It was assumed for a time that it was the prevailing strain. Then the soldier died quite suddenly. The laboratory work revealed that he had not been affected by A/Victoria at all. He and – it came out later, 12 other soldiers – had been attacked by this new strain which is for all purposes of identification almost indistinguishable from the virus that caused the appalling pandemic of 1918-19 in which over 20 million people died. The scientists call it 'swine influenza' because its virus, in turn, resembles a virus that causes the flu in pigs. 

Anyway, when it was confirmed that the virus which appeared at Ford Dix was as close as makes no matter to the 1918-19 killer, the president called to the White House a delegation of public health officials, bacteriologists and the like, including the two most renowned developers of a vaccine against poliomyelitis, Dr Salk and Dr Sabin. Dr Sabin appeared the other night, very briefly, on the evening news. He said everybody must understand that the isolation of this new virus was very important and that the plan to vaccinate the entire population was enormously complex. At that point, he was whisked, so to speak, off the screen and if we were a cynical type, we might say that no presidential candidate is going to hand the microphone to any adviser who warns people that any issue at all is enormously complex. That suggests that the voter is going to have to go home and think and every candidate entered in a state primary knows that that's a sure recipe for losing votes. 

Senator Henry Jackson, for instance, does not explore the difficulties of giving jobs at one and the same time to people in arms factories and to people who would be getting more work if the raw materials for armaments were going into, say, small and cheaper cars. Senator Jackson, whenever he appears in a city and before a blue-collar audience, keeps saying one thing: he has most at heart the interests of the lunch bucket. 

Well, as I was saying, I was fascinated by Dr Sabin's disappearance from the television screen just when he seemed to be about to say that the plan to vaccinate the entire population was complicated, possibly unnecessary, possibly unwise. I can't swear to his attitude. There was no way of finding out about it later. The New York Times, in a long piece, simply quoted Dr Sabin as saying that he didn't think anything as large-scale as the president's vaccination programme had ever been attempted. But NBC did give more than a hint that Dr Sabin isn't a wholehearted backer of the plan. 

At any rate, once the cheers have died down for the president's splendid humanitarian act, we shall look at the feasibility of it. In other words, it may be a noble thing to do, but can it be done? The swine flu virus has to be grown in fertilised hen's eggs and, at the moment, we are somewhere between fifty and a hundred million eggs short. Also, so far, not a single vaccine has been released by the government for general use or, to be more accurate, for use at all. What we have on hand are a few small experimental batches. 

Also, in any given year, the pharmaceutical industry produces about 20 million doses of vaccine against the familiar flu viruses. To vaccinate 215 million Americans, the experts have calculated it will take five times as many doses as usual and if five times 20 million doesn't come to 215 million, take it up with President Ford! 

It also came out on Thursday that down in Atlanta, Georgia – which moviegoers know as the home of Scarlett O'Hara but which doctors tend to know as the scarlet fever capital, it's the government's disease control centre – down in Atlanta they say that, in all the land, there are only 900 immunisation guns and that if every bacteriologist, government agent, GP, distributor, truck driver, makes a supreme effort between now and the end of the summer, another 900 guns only could be made in time for the autumn vaccinations. 

Perhaps the president had second thoughts not about the necessity of the plan, but its practicality when he let the news go out that the vaccination programme was voluntary after all and that many Americans should avoid it. It is not recommended for people with heart trouble or diabetes and certainly not for people who are allergic to eggs. 

By the way, I found in trying out these misgivings on my dog that it doesn't seem to be common knowledge. I'm talking about allergy to eggs. I stumbled on it wonderingly, ooh, all of 40 years ago, when a friend of mine, an American newspaper correspondent in London came to dinner and didn't know – I didn't know and didn't care – that we gave him some sweet pudding, dessert or whatever you now care to call it, that masked one ingredient. The ingredient was eggs. Dinner was no sooner over than he flushed purple, his cheeks ballooned till he seemed close to exploding and he did start to explode in violent coughings and splutterings. Luckily, he had on hand some antidote but I must say next time I saw a hen, I winced. 

I hope this picture of an egg allergy victim is not too vivid. I might be accused of inducing egg allergy in people whose mind it had not crossed. Believe me, the power of suggestion in hypochondriacs is unlimited. I know. I've been there and I speak as the founder of the Hypochondriasis Suggestibility Lab. I don't want to leave the normal, sensible, unimaginative, non-hypochondriacs with the bait dangling in the water. Let me just say that the sort of experiment we performed is, for instance, to blindfold a sample – a human being, that is – ask him if he likes chocolate, and if he registers enthusiasm on the Richter scale, says something like, 'Yum, yum!' or 'Oh boy!' we then hand him a glass of tomato juice. This experiment should be performed out of doors. 

Well, I'm sorry to ride a hobby horse. I have dismounted and am back to President Ford and his great humanitarian gesture. The reporters who are following this presidential campaign say that a new and heartening, and even funny, change has overcome President Ford. Until the primary campaign began, he talked in resounding phrases about peace, security, prosperity, the American way and all those other abstract things we all greatly desire but can't quite visualise. 

But after he'd won in New Hampshire and again in Massachusetts, he reverted to a famous tactic, practised so brilliantly not so much by John F. Kennedy as by his brother, Robert, in the 1960 campaign. He sent his agents out into the counties and said, 'What do you want? A new bridge? A post office? A sewage plant? A pension? We'll give it to you.' 'When?' the sceptical voters asked. 'Whenever you say!' he said. Mr Ford has learned to say, 'Whenever you say!' And it's worked. 

Reagan won in North Carolina because he tumbled to it in more frightening ways. 'You want the Soviets over here?' 'Not blank likely.' 'OK. Vote for Reagan!' 

Well, whatever has been promised, whatever money any candidate promises the people, there are $135 million that nobody is now going to deny them. Whether the swine flu vaccine is essential or impossible to distribute, there's not a candidate who dare say the voters 'nay'. The plan combines two essential ploys of political campaigning. We are going to guarantee you against sickness and the government is going to pay. Some time in the fall, we'll look at this colossal programme again. 

If it's as difficult as the scientists say, the next president may wish the country was populated by such cheerful vaccination experts as the New York bartender who, when told that a scientific study shows bartenders suffer a great hazard from the smoke that boozers exhale at them across the bar said, 'Won't do me any harm. I smoke four packs a day myself as it is!'

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.

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