Swine Flu Outbreak In London

SWINE Flu is upon us and the papers and London-based broadcast media are embracing it like risen again Jade Goody. This is the big scare story the media can really sink its teeth into.

Already this morning GMTV has broadcast “LIVE” from outside Manchester Airport, where people might be soon flying in from pig-ravaged Mexico. Or pigs might be flying in. Reach for the skies!

Mexico is so dangerous that a GMTV reporter is LIVE and, possibly, mask-less from a Cancun beach, where holidaymakers are milling around on the look out for snotty pigs and cheap eats.

The papers react with circumspect objectivity:

“Flu: Britain Order 32million masks – 42% are at risk here” – Daily Express

“Pig Flu Out Of Control” – The Sun

“Swine flu could strike millions” – Metro

Those masks come too late for the Askhams – oh, how nominative determinalism shapes our lives.

While we wonder why the Government’s stock pile of bird flu masks (and they did order enough of those, right?) are no good in combating pig flu – something to do with the shape of the nose, perhaps – we consider Iain and Dawn Askham, Britain’s first swine flu victims.

How are they?