Opinion: Back to the days when doctors were clever.

An outbreak of Scarlet Fever reminds us of how clever doctors used to feel. The disease has caused great excitement, as the hospital initially thought it was Meningococcal sepsis and notified public health.

Bad news travels faster than light, and GPs see patients at a greater rate than any other known doctor. So in the time the news of the meningococcus took to travel to Ipswich the whole town knew about it and we had already seen a few dozen patients.

And so, just before Ipswich rang to tell us about the meningococcus, we rang them to tell them it was actually Scarlet Fever... Bad News became Good News, we felt a bit heroic, lots of people got penicillin, …