Sky News, The Swines

Sky news were guilty of a bit of scaremongering yesterday as their breaking news banner flashed across the screen announcing Britains first death from Swine flu, trying to make the situation look worse than it really is, as if we are all suddenly in imminent danger of dropping dead from this virus. The reality is that yesterdays victim had a host of underlying medical problems which contributed to their death, worldwide Swine flu has claimed 145 lives out of a world population of some six billion that number is minuscule. so far over 1100 people have the virus in the UK with that figure set to rise but symptoms are mild, in most cases after a few days the patient has recovered. The World Health organisation have upgraded it this week to a pandemic but that is more to do with numbers than severity. Experts are hoping that it is close to peaking and the number of new cases will start to drop in the next few months, however if the virus is still going strong as we approach the winter months then you may see an explosion in numbers, but while it remains a mild strain don't panic just yet.