The World Health Organisation, backed by Western leaders, argues that pandemics can be contained by the rapid responses of medical bureaucracies. The idea is that the strain is identified and then dealt with by local populations getting enough anti-viral drugs.

Rather than working together to produce a vaccination for each new flu strain, which is unprofitable for the pharmaceutical companies because many new flu strains don’t reach pandemic level, governments tend to rely on generic anti-virals such as Tamiflu.

Concentrated poverty is one of the most important issues in what happens to a flu outbreak – how it is spread and who it hits. Twenty million or more of the deaths in the 1918-19 flu outbreak were in poorest parts of India. That’s why it is unsurprising at this moment that deaths have occurred in only in Mexico. However, not only in the poorer countries but also the richest the poor are hit hardest. In the most sophisticated analysis of pandemic mortality, a case study of the 1918 flu found that “the working class and blue collar workers experienced the heaviest death rates...particularly in the inner city, and that unemployment was a consistent a predicator of mortality as more conventional epidemiological factors such as person per room density”.

Furthermore, a key factor behind new diseases such as the swine flu threat is the growing concentration of animal production without appropriate regulation or biological safeguards. Food production is driven by a handful of giant global corporations. This means large numbers of livestock crammed together to maximise profits.

Two thirds of poultry production in Britain already takes place in flocks of over 100,000 birds. In the US today 65 million pigs are concentrated in just 65,000 facilities, compared to 53 million pigs on more than one million farms in 1965. In such huge units animals are more prone to disease, which can rapidly spread and evolve into more deadly forms.

Cuts in the regulation and monitoring of the meat industry also create huge dangers. In the Budget Alistair Darling announced savings of £44 million by cutting “animal disease surveillance through a more risk-based approach to monitoring and enforcement and by sharing costs with industry”.

We live in the shadow of a global recession hanging over us and the bosses and politicians want us to pay for their crisis. Billions of public money has been poured into the banking system. That money should be used to create jobs, housing and healthcare for all. And it should be used to ensure vaccinations are developed for the treatment of various strains of influenza regardless of whether they become pandemic or not. Put people first.