Black Death v Swine Flu

"The ‘hushing-up’ system is in sanitary matters about as dangerous as anything can well be” - The Lancet, 1870.

I've moaned on many an occasion about the lack of any helpful details on swine flu deaths. The website Straight Statistics shares my exasperation and points out: "When a British soldier dies in Afghanistan, we know within days the sex, age and region of residence of the fatality, together with the immediate cause of death. How different it is for swine flu."

Actually, there's a more stark example than the parallel with soldiers dying in Afghanistan: I can find out more details about people who died during a visit the Black Death to Cumbria in 1598 than I can about swine flu in 2009. For the Black Death I can tell you how many died, their names, where they lived, the precise date of their death, sex, occupation, partner's name, social class and whether they were buried in the churchyard or out on the Fells. No ages are given but it would be easy to work these out by checking with the baptismal records. In contrast the information given to the public about swine flu deaths in modern Britain in 2009 is: the number of deaths and... er, well that's it really.

The latest entrant for my "2009 Hushing Up Award" is the Department of Health in Northern Ireland. You may recall great confusion in the last few days as to whether a baby in the province died of swine flu or not. This wasn't helped by the Department of Health claiming it died of a heart condition not related to swine flu and yet the baby's death seemingly been added to the swine flu death tally in that week's figures released by the Health Protection Agency. The Department of Health refused to release the sex or age of the baby. For goodness sake why not! One can fully appreciate the family wanting their details kept private but to say, for example, a baby boy of six months has died is hardly likely to intrude on their grief. I can't even tell you with any certainty on what date the baby died but it was probably September 15th, 2009 The medieval peasants scribbling on parchment 400 years ago did, it seem, a better job of recording data than 21st century man.

Black Death: Hopefully nothing like swine flu

My interest in swine flu has rekindled my interest in other plagues, including the Black Death of the mid-14th Century. So rather timely as been the publication in paperback of Prof John Hatcher's "The Black Death - An Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis", published by Phoenix. Prof Hatcher gives the already saturated Black Death literary market a personal twist by providing a fictional narrative of what it must have been like to live in the village of Walsham during these years. But - fortunately - Prof Hatcher can't keep the academic in him down and we are showered with wonderful historical detail about those times. Frightening but totally absorbing.

How to avoid the plague

This morning a member of staff has reported her husband has swine flu. This is the closest 'friend of a friend' report to date so it's time to look at how to avoid the plague...

I've already noticed a 'siege mentality' beginning to occur in relation to swine flu: Tales of Sainsbury's not issuing Tamiflu because they don't want sick people in their store; and France deporting British school pupils who might have swine flu. It's all been tried before of course. A quick look at the records of the Great Plague and Black Death show numerous attempts by villages to cut themselves off from the outside world, banning anyone who might bring the infection with them. They all failed of course. The only other recourse was to flee north and hope that you outrun it. Time to get on my bike!

And rather timely, The Guardian has a cut-out and keep guide to swine flu in today's paper.