Swine Flu Line not dead but now offering “enhanced” diagnostic services.

For most people the phantom pandemic that is Swine flu has died a death mainly due to the fact that the infectious agent, the Media, has found Party conferences far more suitable sources of nourishment to feed its parasite like activities.

However, the great Party success that is the National Flu Panic line has resulted in lots of “cures” from its highly trained advisors after 3 hours of intense medical training.

All of us at ND Central have seen many such “cures” who come clutching the sacred relics of the Saint Tamiflu box of pills saying that they have had swine flu but for some reason they are no better despite the “miracle” cure that is St Tamiflu.

From various news items there may be a set of similar holy relics touring the country which might provide better “flu” cures for those that believe not in the National Panic Flu line and the power of Tamiflu. For completeness we provide a link here although as doctors with a scientific training we would not use or recommend it to our patients but it might work if Tamiflu does nothing.

We digress somewhat as it would appear that now that the fully qualified doctors on the National Panic line are now telling patients that they don’t have swine flu they now have:

COMPLICATIONS OF SWINE FLU.

As a result they are given a voucher number for their Tamiflu (that they don’t need) and told to see their GP as an EMERGENCY.

Enter stage right Wilberforce a 5 year old who has had a clear nasal discharge for 5 days, a sore throat, a temperature, a dry cough and a croaky voice but is otherwise well. Both Wilberforce’s parents have had the same symptoms as have his brother and sister who have all got better on their own. Wilberforce’s parents after a disturbed night rang NHS (re)Direct who did exactly what it says on the tin and thought it might be flu and so onto the National Flu Panic line.

Now part of training doctors is talking to young doctors who do not want to do general practice but as part of their foundation training program (another great Party failure) find they spend sometime in general practice. Our current foundation trainee, who is very good, has in the last few weeks become very able at distinguishing between viral and bacterial infections and what does and does not need antibiotics.

Unlike the experts on the National Flu Pandemic Line who have at least 3 hours training our current F2 trainee has the disadvantages and handicaps of the following:

5 years medical training
one year of foundation training (F1) formerly called house jobs
and are currently in their second (F2) year of foundation training formerly called Senior House Officer.

They also have no algorithm to follow just basic grunt training.

This evening we discussed the various respiratory infections we see at this time of year and despite a complete lack of advanced National Flu Panic line training (3 hours) and all of the handicaps we list above our current F2 doctor is able to diagnose that Wilberforce has a simple viral upper respiratory tract infection and needs nothing more at this stage than TLC and will most probably get better on their own.

No complications of swine flu in fact no swine flu.

Praise be to the Party and all its algorithms.

Welcome to the new improved National Pandemic Flu Line now with added “complications of flu” diagnostics as well. They will be doing triple bypasses over the phone next week as well at this rate of evolution.