Swine Flu Public Health Scaremongering Adverts from 1976

Source: Telegraph

These public health commercials from 1976, when doctors feared that an outbreak of the virus in the US could become a pandemic, attempted to heighten fears of the disease to increase the take-up of vaccinations.

In the first advert, clips of active, healthy people insisting they do not need the shot are juxtaposed with footage of them lying sick in hospital beds.

"A swine flu epidemic may be coming... it could make you very sick... you'll want to be protected," the voice-over artist booms above an ominous-sounding drum beat.

The second commercial shows how easily swine flud can be transmitted, between family members and around the country via "a cab driver, a ticket agent, and one of the charming stewardesses."

It continues: "In California, Betty's mother gave it to her best friend Dotty, but Dotty had a heart condition and she died."

Both adverts were sponsored by the US Public Health Service, whose offshoot organisation the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is co-ordinating the US response this year's outbreak.

The 1976 vaccination campaign is now considered to have been an overreaction based on mistaken fears that the swine flu outbreak would pose the same risk as the Spanish flu pandemic that followed the First World War, claiming the lives of up to 50 million people.

Many of the 40 millions Americans who signed up for vaccinations questioned the advice of the country's health experts after the predicted pandemic failed to materialise.