But history provides other examples as well. My favourite is the great swine flu panic of 1976.
That one, too, began with fear and fanfare when, in February, a 19-year-old U.S. army recruit at Fort Dix, N.J., died after contracting a mysterious strain of swine flu.
Politicians swung into action. Faced with the spectre of another 1918-style pandemic, then-U.S. president Gerald Ford promised to inoculate every American citizen with vaccine. The Canadian government followed suit, with the proviso that ? because of the cost involved ? it would be able to inoculate only some.
Throughout 1976, the swine flu story swung between fear and farce. In August, Ontario's health minister announced the province's first swine flu death, a Goderich man. This, as it turned out, was untrue. A coroner later determined that the victim, who choked on his on vomit, had never been infected.
At Queen's Park, politicians debated who would get the scarce vaccine. All agreed on police officers and doctors. But should bank tellers be vaccinated? And what about bus drivers?
In the U.S., Nobel Prize-winning scientist Linus Pauling argued that Vitamin C would fight swine flu better than any vaccine. Here at home, the Toronto Star helpfully suggested that those inoculated against the virus should be required to give up the right to strike.
Ontario's government hemmed and hawed until, in the end, it decided to offer the vaccine to anyone who wanted it.
Alas, few did. By December, the Star reported that municipal clinics set up in Toronto to offer free flu shots were shutting down for lack of customers. Which perhaps was just as well. For when several Americans developed a mysterious and deadly paralysis after being inoculated, swine flu shots were abruptly suspended in both countries.
