When I collected my son from nursery yesterday I was given a letter which said one of the members of staff had a case of “probable swine-flu”.

My initial reaction was shrill and hysterical and probably typical of a lot of parents. A thought flashed through my head. Take him out of the nursery where he enjoys playing with his friends two afternoons a week. Better still close the place down and decontaminate the area and everyone in it. I asked Arthur’s key-worker how the nursery planned to deal with it, but she didn’t know. A closer reading of the letter showed the nursery plans to do precisely nothing about it.

I feel so confused, misled and frustrated by the way this issue has been handled. If the media sowed seeds of anxiety in my mind with the endless stories about pandemics, those seeds germinated when I heard about the sad death of the apparently healthy six-year-old Chloe Buckley. A child’s death is always emotive, but Chloe was a case of someone dying from the illness without “underlying health issues”(whatever they are). Now some reports say Chloe may have had a heart condition. This is based on the gossip of parents whose children went to the same school as her. Whether or not these people are a reliable source of information about the poor girl’s medical history is another issue.

According to our often cited chief health officials, obese people and those with breathing difficulties are most at risk, but the list of underlying health issues also includes things like diabetes, heart disease and a weakened immune systems. But the role played by these underlying health issues in the cases of people dying from swine flu is very unclear. In some cases there is even ambiguity about whether these people even died from swine-flu or from some other condition.

The information about the illness spread all over the press, TV news and the internet is vague and contradictory. Why hide the facts behind misleading language? Today I have read that one in 200 people could die from swine-flu, but I have also read this is about the same as the numbers who die from seasonal flu. If this is the case, what is all the fuss about? Why do the people employed in the media feel it is better to frighten their audience rather than to inform it? In the meantime I won’t be taking Arthur out of nursery, probable cases of swine-flu or no.