Swine flu is harmless (except when it kills you)

Back in the summer noted medical expert Richard Littlejohn was holding forth on the great Swine Flu Con:

Labour blew £1.2 billion on the swine flu epidemic that never was. A new study says all the money spent on patronising advertising campaigns, vaccinations, anti-virals and face-masks probably saved just 26 lives. Each case cost £46million, which would have paid for six months of cancer drugs for 3,000 patients. And no one can be sure if those 26 people wouldn’t have died anyway. Swine flu claimed fewer lives in Britain than a normal winter flu outbreak. That’s despite hysterical predictions from the ludicrous Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer and Whitehall’s resident Dr Death, that 65,000 people would die.

The Mail itself was also displeased with the Government's handling of the pandemic, stating that millions had been "wasted" on vaccines. The TaxPayers' Alliance even weighed in, calling the whole thing a "hugely expensive farce".

Of course, back in the summer of 2009 the Mail was chief among the tabloids in stirring up panic with apocalyptic predictions of death and disaster. And now, in the winter of 2010, guess which paper has this headline:

You guessed correctly, it's the Daily Mail. The same paper also notes that:

The Government has also been accused of doing too little to prevent the spread of flu, such as using adverts to remind people to wash hands or catch sneezes in tissues.

Yes, those would be the "patronising advertising campaigns" that predatory paedophile Richard Littlejohn was complaining about six months ago.