Brian Rudman: Pathetic response to flu threat

So it's official. The authorities have given up the fight. We're to lie back and think of England as the dastardly swine ravages us all.

Even though upwards of 200 of us are likely to die - in the first wave anyway - all officialdom is offering is an 0800 free phone, and some Tamiflu anti-viral drugs left over from the bird flu scare a few years back.

As I heard a not-so-muffled cough rattle around the bus yesterday morning, I didn't feel very much part of the 21st century. I want drugs and vaccines in return for all the taxes I pay, but all I get is advice to blow my nose in a tissue then store it securely in a plastic bag.

Chance would be a fine thing. In my workplace they recently removed our personal rubbish bags as a Green gesture - and to cut back on the cleaning staff. The creepy old nursery rhyme passed down from the years of the Black Death suddenly seem very modern: "Atishoo atishoo, and we all fall down."

Staying in the dark ages, my local Ponsonby News is advising me to beat swine flu by shopping with Dr Ajit at Planet Ayurveda in Mt Eden. He's touting a magic cure-all called Chywanprash, two teaspoons a day of which "gives good immunity against all viruses, hay fever, colds, coughs, fever and sinus headaches".

And if that doesn't seem a bargain, he's also promising wondrous healing properties after major surgery and chemotherapy as well. Nominate that man for one of National's new knighthoods. Give him a Nobel prize. Shame I've already stocked up on garlic and red wine and shrunken heads.

These so-called pandemics do highlight what strange beasts we humans are. Ninety years ago, when a swine flu virus last jumped the species barrier into the human biosphere, at least 50 million people died worldwide - more than had died in the four years of World War I.

In New Zealand the second killer wave of the 1918 influenza epidemic killed almost 8600 people in less than two months, compared with the 18,000 New Zealand soldiers who died during the war.

So what did the humans do? Unite against this common enemy? No way. They rushed off and re-armed and set about killing each other in great numbers all over again.

Five years ago, after the Sars and bird flu scares, there was much talk about creating more vaccine factories worldwide so that when another wave of potentially killer-flu appeared, humanity had a fighting chance of standing up to it. Of course nothing happened. Here in New Zealand, we're one of handful of rich countries that have advance purchase orders for vaccines for the latest pandemic strain. But we're dependent on overseas-based commercial drug companies with no idea when supplies will start arriving, and how much we will get.

By the time the drug manufacturers' home countries are supplied, the epidemic in New Zealand could be over and 200 dead.

This wave of the flu is seemingly mild, but who knows what it could transmogrify into and whether, when that happens, the vaccine we get will be successful against the by then, more deadly, mutated strain.

This year, $2.82 billion of tax dollars will be spent on our armed forces. Nearly $50 million of that will go on the running costs of the controversial LAVs, the 105 light armoured vehicles which cost $667 million to buy a few years back. Yet how many New Zealand lives has that money saved?

If good governance is about protecting the people from overseas threats, then maybe it's time for a rethink of priorities. Why $2.82 billion on soldiers and sailors without an enemy in sight - or over the horizon, yet bugger all spent on protecting us from an invader, which even in its present benign form, the Ministry of Health says will kill up to 200 people.

At the very least, why are we not establishing a national vaccine manufacturing plant so we're no longer dependent on the whims of the multinational drug lords?

Given our supremacy in fields of animal health, I'm presuming we have talented scientists capable of staffing such a facility - either on a full-time basis, or in times of crisis. If needs be, it could be a public/private partnership, if that made the present Government more ideologically comfortable with the concept.

We could connect with public health research facilities elsewhere in the world, taking the lead, but always with the interests of New Zealanders top of the list.

It might cost a bit, but compared with the $667 million spent on something named after the smallest room in the house, it would be money better spent, defence wise.

To sit around waiting for the disease to strike as we're now being advised to do, is medieval.

The weapons to fight it are there, if our governors only got off their backsides and acted. But instead, all they have to offer are tissues and trips to Planet Ayurveda.