Last week swine flu virus got through Australia's famously tight customs and went off to school. But a month ago, in Geneva, the first days of swine flu literally sent the World Health Organisation (WHO) to their panic stations.
For a while everything felt precarious, as images of Mexicans in masks appeared in the media. It was as if the 'fiction' in science fiction had been annihilated. The possibilities were nightmarish.
Swine flu is an unknown quantity. The language surrounding it is highly specialised. Globalisation makes it hit home faster, and sections of the media work hard to transform fear into cold hard cash. It's easy to start thinking survivalist kind of thoughts.
On 27 April, when the panic was at its height, a strange thing happened near the headquarters of WHO. Vials of swine flu, travelling on a domestic train from Lausanne to Geneva, first rattled, then exploded. Sixty domestic passengers were checked for swine flu. Two, caught in the crossfire of the exploding vials, were slightly injured.
The explosion wasn't caused by swine flu, but by the inept packing of the dry ice surrounding the vials. The incident provided light relief but, seen from a global level, it raised greater questions about who is navigating the unknown waters of swine flu and how.
In Geneva, member states are debating questions of equity surrounding the manufacture of a swine flu vaccine. In the race to produce a vaccine, developing countries are being asked to hand over strains of the flu to WHO, who will give them to pharmaceutical companies for the purpose of manufacturing a vaccine.
It has been acknowledged that, in the event of a pandemic, there is currently no capacity for everyone to receive the vaccine. So who decides who will be left out? And will the price be affordable?
Indonesia is one of the countries refusing to hand over their bacteria because, as they point out, in the event of a global pandemic, they will be forced to purchase the vaccines they helped create, at a price they cannot afford, benefiting the pharmaceutical companies and the economy of the United States.
They have a point. What's in it for them except a fuzzy feeling?
This raises questions about international intellectual property rights and highlights that the issues that surround swine flu are far from purely scientific. They are riddled with age old questions of equity, and that annoying human suspicion that someone, somewhere is on the take.
It's undeniable that life in the developing world is precarious at the best of times. Many have been left to rely upon international organisations and their own families, leaving out the second ring of protection: the nation state and its infrastructure.
Increased global interdependence means that these developing nations need extra assistance, not just to tackle this virus but beyond — after all, the appearance of new diseases doesn't mean the old ones disappear.
As scientists, pharmaceutical companies and nations scramble to understand swine flu, people are dying. A report by WHO on the burden of global disease in late 2008 estimated malaria had infected 247 million people and killed 881,000 in 2006, with 91 per cent of the deaths in Africa, and 85 per cent children under five.
At the moment the overwhelming majority of people with swine flu recover and although it's important this new microbe is understood, it is equally important to remember that out there, beyond the relatively well-funded and stable health systems of those living in the West, people still die from a preventable disease.
For most of us swine flu induces a mild panic. Our minds may entertain apocalyptic scenarios, but our bodies remain firmly rooted in an unchanged environment. News about the virus changes every hour, but for many who are removed from immediate threat, and who cultivate healthy scepticism of governments, international bodies and pharmaceutical companies, this new virus puts that scepticism to the test.
When the Spanish flu ripped through Europe in 1918 there were no antibiotics or vaccines; people were raw before the microbes. How these new medicines are distributed, what the long-term effects will be and who profits are already hot questions.
WHO has a mandate to assist those governments who are unable to care for their own people. Let's hope this mandate is fulfilled. But it is vital that funding for malaria and other diseases that affect the third world is not tampered with in order to allay the fears of the Western citizen.
As the exploding vials of swine flu reveal, this virus is in human hands, and humans easily make mistakes.
Bronwyn Lay lives with her family in rural France, over the border from Geneva. She is currently enrolled in a Masters of English Literature at the University of Geneva and is working on her first novel. Previously she worked as a legal aid lawyer in Australia with post-graduate qualifications in political theory.