Brian Molloy

Summary:

In the article “Pandemic or Panic” (2010) by Brian Molloy

and the article “Hindsight is easy” (2010) by Erica Grove, they

both discuss the way WHO response to the outbreak of H1N1

influenza and they present different perspectives on how the

money was spent on and how the resource was distributed.

Molloy is neutral about the WHO’s response of H1N1 influenza

outbreak, while Molloy is highly skeptical. First, Molloy argues

that WHO send everyone into a panic about H1N1, but it is

not the threat people imaged it to be. Grove, however, states

that it is necessary for the WHO and the government to take

the threat of H1N1 seriously. Next, Molloy claims that British

government spend a lot of money on
vaccine which makes

two major pharmaceutical companies earn billions from swine

flu, and there is a conflict of interest between the government

and drug manufactures. He believes that this money should be

spent on a right situation like helping disable instead of treating

flu.
Grove also believes that there is a mismanagement of the

distribution of vaccine.

Discussion:

Molloy claims that the WHO and the government spends

massive expenditure on doses of vaccine, while the death rate

for H1N1 is far low than for ordinary influenza. He criticizes the

reports of H1N1 cases are exaggerated which send people into

a panic about H1N1. By contrast, Grove states that the WHO

did not overreact to the crisis. Rather, she feels grateful that

the authorities took the threat of a pandemic seriously. She

also points out that everything is always better to overprepare

than to underprepare. Molloy appears to have overlooked

that the powerful of virus can be. In fact, there are a couple

of factors like infectivity, severity and lethality which can all

affect the strength of a virus. Transmission is also a key factor

to determine how the virus spread and be identified. As Molloy

mentions that the death rate for H1N1 is relatively low than

for ordinary pandemic, it does not mean that H1N1 is a weak

influenza. Perhaps the low death rate is due to early trace
the

source, infected people are well isolated from the rest of the

community in order to control the spread of H1N1, or synthesis

of a new vaccine by scientists in a short period of time. These

could be one of the reasons of why the death rate for H1N1 is

low. In this sense, Molloy fail to notice that.