Far too much tax payer money was wasted on these exaggerated and flawed pandemic alerts. I am sure that the quangos concerned such as the Health Protection Agency will hope that the huge billion plus expenditure is now forgotten. They will also claim to have made their own enquiries and conclusions. However the public do need to bring them to account as to why the mistakes were made and how we can be sure they will not continue making them.
In March 2009 the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Advisory Committee (SPI) Previously: Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) advised to the government that in the UK alone a pandemic could affect up to 50% of the population and cause between 50,000 and 750,000 deaths. Why was so many of the committee members made up from people like Dr Alison Webster from GlaxoSmithKline who had vested interests for mass vaccinations and stock piling of antiviral drugs like Tamiflu.
The wider concern here is that just like the global warming industry (were there might be some truth), there is a £billion pandemic industry now feeding upon itself to justify more and more scientic reasons to market their own professions. And of course the news medias are equally quick to exploit public fears as they know in Dundee.