much money the Government spent stock-piling both Tamiflu and vaccine. The supposed over-hyping of the outbreak is easy to say in retrospect but imagine the public reaction if the Government and public health folk said everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about but then people started dropping like flies. There would have been hell to pay so I think they were really in a no-win situation, even if it does mean that in future people don't take public health warnings seriously enough. The prescription figures were NOT used to assess the level of flu activity. Instead public health used so-called "spotter practices" who kept a note of all patient contacts resembling flu and phone in the results every week. How do I know? Because we were one of them! The flu outreak was not "contrived" -- over-hyped maybe (thanks in no small part to our friends in the media again) but not contrived. There is no conspiracy though it might be possible to have a go at the Government for over-hyping the situation as it gave them the chance to appear in control when the economic crisis had shown them to be so obviously out of control. DrJG said, @skyesteve -- sadly, my commonest experience (in England) was this: Patients phoned the advice line as they had been told to, and were told to have tamiflu. I certainly cannot remember seeing anyone who came to me worried that they had been refused it. Many then came to