Swine Flu Across London…Mapped

It’s nice that the news media seems to have finally moved on from MPs’ expenses. But it’s not such a jump from MPs ‘in the trough’ to bigging up the latest scare story of the moment – Swine Flu. Finally, this version of the influenza virus is having an impact on these shores and in our city.

We’re no medical experts, but this doesn’t seem to us to be particularly more virulent than other forms of flu, which kill thousands of people each year. Levels of infectiousness (is that a word?) seem no different, so it makes no sense to avoid public transport or barricade yourself in at home with nothing but tinned food and a copy of War and Peace. If you’ve bought yourself one of those masks to cover your mouth, stop being ridiculous as it’s entirely useless.

The London Evening Standard (lovingly re-branded and re-positioned as being more positive about life) has, er, lovingly provided a map by borough of suspected cases. Tower Hamlets has the highest proportion, and Richmond the lowest. But any analysis doesn’t really explain why – Wealth? Concentration of population? Public transport provision? Whether the borough plumped for Boris or for Ken last year? It all seems reasonably random to us. And remember these are ‘suspected’ cases. So these are people who look like they’ve got flu, not those who definitely have it, let alone the swine version.

Googlemaps have an international cases map up here, too.

Mind you, there have been a few worrying snuffles and sneezes in Londonist Towers this week, but more on that later…

Image from SveterCZE’s Flickrstream under the creative commons licence