Media commentators have been having fun with a story in the Evening Standard of March 30. “Flu pandemic could kill 94,000 people in London” wrote Tim Ross and Mark Prigg, as swine flu fever threw those of a nervous disposition into a panic.

 
“Borderline lunacy” was the response of Stephen Glover, in The Independent. He accused the paper, and its free version, London Lite (where the story was bylined Mark Blunden) of alarmism.
 
                                        
 
He went on: “Below, in smaller type, readers were informed that ‘Ealing and Barnet to be worst hit’. According to the story, 4,235 people may die in Ealing, while the smallest overall possible death toll in London as a whole will be 7,500. Isn’t this absurd?” In Pulse a blogger who preserves his anonymity behind the name Jobbing Doctor called it “nonsense on stilts”.
 
Absurd it may be; nonsense, quite possibly. But the Standard journalists had a source. It is the official emergency plans for pandemic flu, version 4, dated March 2009, signed off by the body responsible, London Resilience. Here is where the 94,000 deaths came from, and the individual run-downs for all the London boroughs.
 
London Resilience declares: “It is possible that the pandemic influenza virus will have a 50 per cent clinical attack rate and a 2.5 per cent case fatality rate. For London, that means planning for approximately 94,000 possible excess deaths.”
 
And what’s special about Ealing and Barnet? Barnet is one of the biggest boroughs by population, hence the projected excess deaths, at 4,113, are among the largest. Ealing seems to have slipped in by error: my reading of the chart shows Croydon (next to Ealing, alphabetically) being the borough to endure 4,235 deaths. Ealing, which is smaller, would suffer a mere 3,810.
 
Now it’s true that the Standard journalists picked the worst-case scenario for their story – but that’s journalism, surely? If official emergency plans cite and tabulate these figures, you must expect journalists to quote them. So apart from confusing Ealing with Croydon – two boroughs with the whole of London stretched between them – I would acquit Ross, Prigg and Blunden of error.
Opprobrium, if any is merited, should be directed at London Resilience, who produced an emergency plan designed to scare. For those who like a shiver, it’s at www.londonprepared.gov.uk.