Swine Flu Parties

Social gatherings staged to spread swine flu, with the aim of contracting the virus before it becomes more virulent.

As rumors of people attending “swine flu parties” circulated in the U.K., the British Medical Association warned parents against voluntarily exposing their children to the virus. As The Telegraph reported:

For many years, parents have deliberately exposed their children to playmates with chickenpox in order to allow them to have the once-only disease at a convenient time.

No firm evidence has emerged of such events taking place with swine flu and Dr Richard Jarvis, of the British Medical Association, warned parents against staging such events.

Reporting on this trend in May 2009, The Times’s Donald G. McNeil Jr.wrote:

Infectious-disease specialists say they understand the logic: surviving the current, apparently mild strain of the virus may be protective if a more virulent strain emerges next fall. But they are generally against it.

Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu specialist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said she had been called by a reporter for a women’s magazine “asking if mothers should hold swine flu parties, like chickenpox parties.” …

“I think it’s totally nuts,” Dr. Moscona said. “I can’t believe people are really thinking of doing it. I understand the thinking, but I just fear we don’t know enough about how this virus would react in every individual. This is like the Middle Ages, when people deliberately infected themselves with smallpox. It’s vigilante vaccination – you know, taking immunity into your own hands.”

The idea has arisen from the history of the 1918 Spanish flu. A mild spring outbreak was followed by two deadly waves in the early and late winter of 1918-1919. Some believe, although there is little evidence beyond anecdotal reports in old newspapers, that those who got sick in the first wave were less likely to get sick in the second and third.

Although the British Medical Association warned that deliberate attempts to catch the virus “could undermine the fight against swine flu,” The Times of London’s Alpha Mummy blog was skeptical about the existence of swine flu parties:

… read closely and you see it’s all a ferfuffle over nothing. BBC writes about “reports” of the get-togethers. As Justine [Roberts] points out on one Mumsnet thread, discussions about them centre around mums wondering whether it’s better to get swine flu now rather than in autumn when it will have mutated and be more virulent. It’s a valid question. Even the doctors don’t know. But has anyone ever been invited? Has anyone stocked up on fairy cakes and actually thrown one?

Swine flu parties are a daft idea, not least because of the question of what to put in the party bag. There’s also the risk of death, which spoils the fun, regular flu symptoms which are pretty terrible anyway and no guarantee you would actually create immunity.

But beyond that, swine flu parties are a daft idea because they are only that: an idea. Unless, of course, you’ve been invited to one. In which case, let me know what they served for snack.