Abstract
At the time of writing, I had just watched an excellent TV dramatisation entitled ‘The Forgotten Fallen’, which described events during the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. I was pondering the similarities between this earlier pandemic and the current one, so on reading Nicola O'Connell's article, ‘Panic pandemic or is swine flu a real cause for alarm? in this issue of Nurse Prescribing I was able to draw some interesting comparisons, which made me think particularly about the public reaction to the swine flu pandemic. Where I work, in Leicester city in the East Midlands, we have had our fair share of cases of swine flu in the community, and consequently I have seen a full range of attitudes tothis, from members of the general public and from within the nursing profession. Th e attitudes I have witnessed range from panic on the one hand, to complacency on the other. Extremes can be dangerous, and it is important for us health professionals to get the message across about the seriousness of the situation without inadvertently causing fear and alarm.
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