On Sunday it was confirmed two children and an adult have the dreaded virus variant H5N1, which means it has escaped from the five Turkish provinces where it had been quarantined. At least 23 people checked into Van’s University Hospital, in the region where the Kocygit family lives and three of them are in serious condition.

 

Disinformation and fear of a pandemic resulted in hundreds of people going to the hospitals claiming to have avian flu symptoms. In the midst of such general terror, the government headed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayep Erdogan, asked people to keep calm and not to panic. As usual, it spoke about an exaggerated state of alarm. Politicians are not usually particularly original. Around the end of October when the avian flu got to Europe, in Spain, the Health Minister Elena Salgado also criticized Spaniards for being alarmed, in her opinion, for no good reason. In addition to criticizing the citizens for buying vaccinations against the common flu to the point of them selling out in several regions, the Minister criticized what she called the “competitive race” to accumulate antiviral medicine to be ready for a possible pandemic spread of flu, while she said she wished there were no competition in this matter and that all autonomic regions bought the same amount of antiviral medicine that would be enough for the same percentage of their population. In other words, that the important thing was not the amount of medicine but the shortage of the medicines would be the same in every region in Spain.

 

It is interesting, here, in Turkey and in Timbuktu, how political power accuses the population of being too alarmed and of not being properly informed while it censors one of the most valuable sources of information available: the companies devoted to investigating the virus and looking for a solution. It is crazy, but the truth is that European guideline 2002/83/EC forbids pharmaceutical companies from informing people about or publicizing their products, their characteristics and their limits. If the most reliable information is banned, how do they expect us to be informed? First they diminish our right to be informed and then they accuse us of not being informed.

 

In the meantime, the information that is not forbidden to us is produced by our politicians, which gets darker and more contradictory by the day. While, as an example, Ms. Salgado’s Ministry says “the necessary devices are ready for the improbable case that the any person contracts the illness”, the World Health Organization says that “it can be predicted that most governments will only start taking emergency measures when the pandemic menace becomes unquestionable and immediate”. Those who stock up on antiviral medicine are criticized, but the WHO insists on the importance of increasing production and the supply of vaccinations as well as guaranteeing equal access to them. But according to our Minister, it doesn’t matter how much medicine we have because the WHO has not recommended a specific amount.

 

To sum up, it is all in the hands of the politicians. We are astonished witnesses to a great show of sanitary cynicism. We have to be properly informed but only those who have the least incentive to be honest can inform us. Those who know the most, and in addition have both their prestige and property at stake if they give false or inexact information, are banned from informing us. Someone ought to tell our leaders that they are not our parents and that the scam of misinforming us for own good won’t wash.