The grim reaper has finally clocked in for a proper shift in Oz, where the first corpse has been bagged in their worst diphtheria outbreak since the days when men were men and antibiotics were a twinkle in Fleming's eye. One poor soul, name withheld for the sake of family dignity and decent reporting, has shuffled off this mortal coil thanks to a bacterium that ought to have been consigned to the dustbin of medical history. Instead it's back, like a particularly malodorous relative at Christmas, coughing and spluttering its way through the antipodes.
Meanwhile, back in Blighty, the mandarins at the Department of Health have apparently remembered that we too have vaccine cupboards, and they are now peering at them with the sort of anxious fascination usually reserved for a leaking gas pipe. The 'urgent' review of our stockpiles suggests a level of panic that is both refreshingly honest and deeply troubling. One imagines a civil servant with a clip-board, tutting at the dwindling number of vials, all while humming the tune of 'Things Can Only Get Better' through gritted teeth.
The irony is so thick you could carve it with a scalpel. Here is a disease that was beaten. Thrashed. Sent to the naughty corner of contagions. And yet, thanks to the usual blend of anti-vaxxer idiocy and international travel, it has clawed its way back into the headlines. The first victim in Australia serves as a rather stark reminder that disease doesn't respect borders, or the decades we've spent pretending we've won the war against it.
One can only hope that the British review isn't simply a box-ticking exercise, a prelude to some excruciatingly NHS press release about 'robust preparedness' and 'lessons learned.' The real lesson, surely, is that we are a planet of over-boiled ninnies who have forgotten the simple price of cleanliness and a jab. Now we must pay it again, with interest.
So raise a glass of gin, if you still have a throat that can swallow it, and toast the poor sod in Sydney who paid the ultimate price for our collective forgetfulness. And perhaps write to your MP. Ask them if the nation's vaccine stockpile is gathering dust or ready to deploy. The answer, I suspect, will be as comforting as a paper mask in a plague pit.
