I heard a report suggesting that in previous pandemics, a large proportion of those contaminated by flue virus were in the 20 to 40 age range. This is a group that doesn’t feature largely in the annual flu cull. Yes no need to panic but if it comes in the next six months the nation might be in deep trouble. 17 million doses won’t cover it, so who gets left out? I would suggest it’s more important when faced with this kind of threat, to decide who gets left in! Who is more important to a nation a young child, a productive adult or a ninety year old patient in a nursing-home? Of course it all depends on how virulent the pathogen is and how successful relatively young people are in combating the infection. Hopefully evidence for this will show up close to the sight of first trans-mutation, and providing there is no great splatter effect, we should have time to address this moral dilemma, before the bugs start falling around our orifices. Your initial reaction to the figure 120,000 for flue related deaths was that you were not worried, but if this turned out to be the predicted deathrate, it would be ten times the normal range. I suggest that this would be something to realy worry about! That might mean your call rate would have to go up considerably, in order to cope with additional demand. Emergency planning will be going on right now to ensure that casualty reception will not get clogged up. Of course their would be plenty of volunteers to help in the care of patients, a certain wayof getting ones share of the anti viral medication!