First wave over
Wednesday 9th December 2009, 2:58PM GMT.
Medical Officer of Health Dr Rosemary Geller
THE number of Islanders being diagnosed with swine flu has dropped dramatically for the second week in a row.
Only six new cases of the disease were diagnosed last week – the lowest weekly rise for almost two months.
A total of 62 cases were recorded in the previous week, compared to 242 in the week before that.
The Health Department said that the significant drop in new cases showed that the battle against the disease in Jersey was being won.
Medical Officer of Health Dr Rosemary Geller said: ‘The number of new cases fell to remarkably low levels last week. The swine flu pandemic team have worked incredibly hard to curtail our first wave, and this is a fantastic result.’
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Children on the Baxter vaccine are only now having the mandatory booster, whilst most of the population are vaccine free. The said “battle against the disease in Jersey was being won”. would appear to have been achieved by the ‘washing of the hands’ or good old ‘nature’.
We await the second wave with interest.
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Does anyone know how much local GP’s are getting to administer the swine flu vaccine (per vaccine) as the UK GP’s are getting £5.25 per vaccine.
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Just returned from Mexico ,came back with flu found out today it,s not swine flu but post holiday blues and man flu!!. people go there it,s fab, fab, fab!!!!
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Go see how little they spent in Guernsey on this….and you know what…they’re all still standing.
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Well done, Dr Geller!
She and her colleagues have worked like Trojans to overcome swine ‘flu – and public prejudice as well.
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I doubt that the Health Department realise that most islanders now view the whole battle against swine flu as a colossal waste of time and money.
Contrary to the early pronouncements of wards crammed with critically ill patients and dozens of dead, virtually nothing has happened.
There is one certainty though, we will never find out how much it cost!
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Can we please have some relevant facts from Dr.G instead of this bland statement.e.g no of cases,total spend on swine flu and cost per case.?
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You can bet that there will be some pay rises and gongs handed out when it is all over.
Proportional of course to the perceived/portrayed danger to us all.
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No. 6) Pip. What makes you think you speak for the entire island then? Most of the people I know have actually praised Health for the actions they have undertaken and feel that it is no coincidence that the rates of flu have been so low. Just because a dozen or so regular posters on here continually slag Rosemary Geller (and for that matter, just about anything else that involves the States) that doesn’t necessarily mean we all think the same way.
Oh, and by the way, the pronouncements of critically ill people and mass deaths came from journalists sensationalising story lines, usually on ‘no news’ days.
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Dr Geller is giving herself a pat on the back but who is to say it was going to turn in to a massive epidemic anyway-oh yes Dr Geller did!I have watched the dramatic headlines on this website for weeks now and had family members in Jersey worrying themselves sick over whether to get their children vaccinated whereas it is not getting a mention where I live in England.All very strange!
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#9 TB
What I think Pip was trying emphasis is the cost involved for a vaccine programme that has not been replicated in Guernsey (which is at just as much risk as Jersey) and has had the same result, a reduction in cases. The same happen in Mexico, vaccine was few and far between as well as Tamiflu and the number of cases dropped after a few weeks.
Oh, and by the way, the critically ill and mass death maybe a product of the media, but Dr Geller doesn’t help by mentioning mass outbreaks with a first wave and the possibility of a second wave. Its called scaremongering and there’s no need to hype it up as much as she has. Point is we’ve spent a massive amount of cash on something that probably helped a very small percentage of folks (definitely so small that hundreds of thousands of pounds were not worth it!), and the pre budget has been released showing a deficit in the Island for at least the next 3 years! Money not well spent, again! If we saw cost per case (which we won’t) it would probably be clear that the cost has out weighed the benefit, and whats worse are people are being congratualted for it!
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So no one died and we were not all layed up with flu for weeks on end so all of those vacinations and doses of tamiflu were a waste of time.
How exactly does that work; vacinations prevent people from getting the disease and Tamiflu either prevents the illness or reduces the symptoms. is there not just the smallest chance that all of these vacinations and doses of tamiflu might just have prevented a major outbreak and mutation of the virus into something more lethal?
Quite frankly all these naysayers make me sicker than the mild case of Swine flu I suffered from thanks to the tamiflu I was prescribed.
I am now more than suprised that we had to import a Medical Officer of Health, when we obviously had so many local experts who were more than up to the job and would not have taken up valuable living space and another J Cat
Thanks Gr Geller for your efforts.
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I believe that Guernsey spent a lot less than us.
The island has not seized up under the weight of a terrifying epidemic and no one has died there either.
We have a huge stockpile of Tamiflu that will never be used, we have sent thermometers to every household, we are geared up to vaccinate every single islander and more besides.
Was our reaction proportional to the risk or have we spent a great deal of scarce resources at a time when we have a £60 – 80M budget deficit and Phillip Ozouf is planning on cuting Health spending to close the gap?
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So we are saying that the 30% vaccination rate in the island was sufficient to overcome this ‘pandemic’. And this came without the 70 predicted deaths? Its amazing what some people will believe.
I’m with JULIE 10 on this whole thing.
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One of the peculiar things about Jersey is that a lot of establishment figures and apologists have no concept that such things as constructive criticism and loyal opposition can exist.
The mindset is ‘If you are not with us then you are against us’
The fact is that it is our government and our money that is being spent.
Members of the public have a right to ask questions and receive answers. If we do not receive those answers and the local media or States members feel that there is a valid point then they should demand answers on our behalf until they are forthcoming!
Anyone who thinks that Jersey is a place where it is all for the best in the best possible place should consider that balancing the budget will require large tax increases plus cuts.
Lots of questioning is going to be needed as they start to get to grips with that one, unless you like the idea of 15% GST!
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TB when the authorities continually get things wrong what do you expect? People are fed up with the way things are going over here, and can you blame them?
I will be the first to congratulate someone when they get something right. However I will not be praising bad decisions or the wasting of money.
Still no answer from the doctor as to why nearly out of date tamiflu was being given to school children when it is apparently ineffective at preventing them getting swine flu.
As far as I am concerned all this was much ado about nothing. However it has cost how much? £500,000 or more?
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Have any of you blinkered ‘crapauds’ ever stopped to consider that your Medical Officer of Health, Dr Rosemary Geller, has done exactly what you pay her for?
Dr Geller’s foresight has PREVENTED a pandemic on your island and all you can do is to whinge and moan.
If any of you naysayers were in charge of preventive medicine or epidemiology in Jersey your public crematorium would be burning night and day to dispose of the corpses. Your gravediggers would be working double shifts, and the island’s undertakers would be delighted with their windfall profits.
Not a single person in Jersey has been forced to be vaccinated against his or her will; no one has had Tamiflu, or any other antiviral medicine, stuffed down their gullets.
Just be thankful that – so far, at least – there have been no deaths and that the number of people affected by swine ‘flu has been relatively low compared with other jurisdictions.
You prejudiced people just do not know when you are well off. Dr Geller and her colleagues are worth their weight in pure gold.
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The swine flu pandemic is “considerably less lethal” than feared, chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson says. (BBC news)
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Oh, come on now Disgusted. What an overreaction to some harmless cynical comments mainly posted to encourage looking more closely at the facts of the matter.
How is Tunbridge Wells managing to survive the pandemic?
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Cynical comments are never harmless! These comments are ignorant in the extreme. What is wrong with ‘nearly out of date’ Tamiflu? Just the same as nearly out of date chicken, it is still in date and you can still eat it! As for Tamiflu not being useful in preventing flu, read the paperwork that comes with the tablets and you will see that actually it is supposed to be used as a preventative measure. People should try indulging in a little informed considered debate not ignorant facile fatuous mud slinging which does more harm than good.
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Who’s to say the worst is over? how do you lot all know swine flu won’t be back bigger and stronger in the coming months. No one knows how this will turn out including Dr Geller so until it is firmly behind us and all done and finished we can’t really comment on actions taken can we
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I would describe my comments as more critical than cynical and quite frankly I think it is time that more criticism was directed at the CoM, States members and the civil service.
The inaction on States reform, huge and wasteful overspending on projects that virtually never come in on time, serious questions that are answered by ‘No comment’ or ‘The matter is closed’ have come about because the ordinary people of this island have slept for too long.
It is time for Jersey to wake up and bring our government to account!
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“Oh, come on now Disgusted. What an overreaction to some harmless cynical comments mainly posted to encourage looking more closely at the facts of the matter.
How is Tunbridge Wells managing to survive the pandemic?”
I cannot speak for Tunbridge Wells as I do not live there. However, the UK – as a whole – is coping admirably with the swine ‘flu epidemic, thank you very much.
The population is being invited (not “ordered”) to be inoculated. This is being done in tranches, with the very young and the very old taking priority. The British public has been very receptive to the slogan “catch it, bin it, kill it”, and the use of antiseptic hand wipes is widespread.
People in Britain are not backward in coming forward when it comes to criticising their government. I took the trouble to look through the online editions of the national newspapers, but in none of them did I see such appalling and unjustified of a public servant (like your Medical Officer of Health) as I have in this newspaper.
Erialc, quoted above, is quite right in saying that we have not yet seen the back of the swine ‘flu epidemic.
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The second sentence of the penultimate paragraph of my recent posting needs correction.
Please insert “criticism” between “unjustified” and “of”.
Thank you.
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“Members of the public have a right to ask questions and receive answers”.
Pip Clement is absolutely correct in what he has written, and he should be congratulated for saying so.
Nevertheless, this right to freedom of expression does not include baseless and undeserved criticism of a public servant who can only grit her teeth and carry on doing the job she has been given.
In the case of Dr Geller, it is to prevent the outbreak of epidemic on our Island.
As others have said before me, neither Dr Geller nor anyone else is forcing anyone to be inoculated against swine flu.
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#10 Julie, it is a small island and as such there will be less news to report than there is in the mainland, the press still need to find things to write!
Dr Geller cannot win on this one. She may of course have prevented an epidemic, but because it never really became as bad as it could have we cannot know how bad it could have become, or whether it would have become that bad had we done nothing. Of course she could have done nothing and let the island have an epidemic but then she wouldn’t have done her job either. If you actually consider her options you might even feel the need to have a little giggle at how ludicrous her options were.
Much as I have disagreed with her on some issues, when it comes to swine flu she is in an entirely lose-lose situation. I don’t envy her it.
As for any return of swine flu, since plenty of people on the island are still not immune to it I can’t see that it would have any problem coming back over on a boat or plane. I’ll try to avoid being the one to bring it.
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Oh dear the swineflu is becoming resistant to the tamiflu vaccine.
Mind you if we get a second wave in the spring the tamiflu will be out of date anyway so will have to be binned I presume?
Boris I understood that the main purpose of using tamiflu was to help reduce the severity of the swineflu once someone had got it.
As per not ordering people to have the vaccine, you can increase the uptake by scaring people by using words such as epidemic and deaths. These emotive words can do a lot to increase the uptake.
C Le Verdic makes an interesting point, how come the UK are holding up so well to this pandemic? They are much less insular than the channel islands so are more likely to be hit to a larger degree. Maybe they are fitter or are lucky?
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Adrian, your acknowledgement of my comment was very kind but I should explain that my reference to Tunbridge Wells was merely to do with the fact that that is traditionally the home town of anyone signing themselves “Disgusted”.
I fear that this also went over the head of the aforementioned, who so readily leapt to my offence.
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Adrian if you read the paperwork that comes with Tamiflu it cl;early states that it is a preventitive measure as well
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Adrian
“Oh dear the swineflu is becoming resistant to the tamiflu vaccine.”
Tamiflu (capital letter as it is a brand) is not a vaccine.
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C Le Verdic#28
A confession, it went straight over my head as well.
Thanks for the explanation.
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‘First Wave Over’ – quite apt for an Island of surfers.
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Disgusted (23) The British public has been very receptive to the slogan “catch it, bin it, kill it”, ”
Alas not so in Jersey. I see countless people everyday coughing, sneezing and spluttering without putting their hands, never mind a hankie, over their mouths.
I’m just surprised that Swine Flu has gotten a greater hold over here.
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