‘Clinical trials have shown that continual ingestion of health scare stories can lead to ill health,’ Dr Maggie Penfold told the Daily Mail yesterday. ‘We are recommending that the government sets guidelines for the safe level of health warnings that a person can safely consume as part of a balanced media diet.’

In tests, previously fit and healthy people were exposed to a series of medical stories ranging from the routine ‘Red wine is good/bad for you’ to the extreme ‘Going to the toilet in Yorkshire causes cancer’. After a twenty day period scientists found that the cumulative effect of exposure to health hysteria caused extreme stress and in some cases physical pain, although they have not ruled out the rather hard chairs in the medical centre as being a contributing factor.

The test results cause a fresh dilemma for Heath Secretary Andrew Lansley who will be forced to decide if he should suppress news of any future ‘flu epidemic in the interests of the nation’s health.

Government officials at Whitehall are known to have already commissioned a study to look in to the possibility of a vaccine against the ravages of excessive health alerts, but, whilst trying to appear upbeat, scientists have gently warned that an effective vaccine may be some way off.

‘The problem with developing a vaccine,’ commented top researcher, Dr Chris Barkway, ‘is that we are unable to test its effectiveness on animals as they cannot understand the health warning. OK, there are more intelligent creatures than laboratory rats to experiment on, dogs for instance, but generally they are better comprehending single words like ‘walkies’ or ‘bath’ rather than phrases such as ‘impending World Health Organisation level six bird flu pandemic.’

Meantime, Mr Lansley has been advised not to read the contents of his ministerial red box more than once a week ‘in the interests of health & safety’.

Bieber Fever, a virulent strain of the prepubescent hysteria that has affected millions of teenage girls worldwide since the early 1960s, is transmitted not just through CDs, merchandising and concerts but – dangerously – through YouTube, Twitter and illegal downloads.

Unveiling the vaccine, lead researcher Dr Serge Butterman explained that the virus has its pathological origin in the Beatlemania epidemic fifty years ago. Although that outbreak was contained, there have been a number of setbacks as the virus jumped from one female generation to another via carriers such as Abba, the Bay City Rollers, and Bros. ‘Bieber Fever is a terrible variant and we attribute its rapid spread to the outbreak of lip-syncing that became endemic after the outbreak of Milli Vanilli in the mid-1980s,’ Dr Butterman said.

The World Health Organisation has responded quickly to the most recent outbreaks. WHO medics were fortunately able to contain the self-replicating Jedward virus in the first stage of mutation by trapping it in a long pantomime run in Dublin. Experts are convinced that if each twin had divided into another two twins, millions of people around the world could have died from punctured eardrums.

It is suspected that Bieber himself, who is expected to survive, is not patient zero, but was himself infected by a dancing albino monkey shipped illegally from Canada.

Milo Shame

A capacity crowd – keen to ‘work from home’  for a couple of weeks – packed out the new H1N1 Stadium in Sydney to watch the event. A poorly athlete staggered up to the centre of the stadium with the ‘flame of ill-health’, carried from Mexico City, before extinguishing it with an impressive sneeze. Teams of consultants and medics representing every nation trooped out onto the pitch to receive the virus, creating a beautiful sea of grubby off-white for spectators. As Margaret Chan of the WHO mounted the podium to officially declare the start of the 2009 pandemic, a sea of green and yellow fireworks filled the sky above the stadium. Following this, Bjork gave a rousing performance of musical hacks, snuffles and oinks, dressed in a voluminous white handkerchief.

‘This is of huge symbolic importance’ claimed Margaret Chang, defending the building of the multi-billion pound stadium with Burmese child labour ‘nations may be divided by ideology, religion and long-running historical feuds, but I believe we can all unite around the universal creed of the WHO: ‘One World, one people, one nation under the weather.’

Staff discovered the error on Monday morning, following reports that most of Mexico, Ecuador and Kansas had been wiped out. Several hundred people in the UK were also reported to be ‘feeling a bit poorly’ and were planning to ‘work from home for the next couple of days if that’s OK.’

A spokesperson for the WHO reassured journalists that the level had been reset to 5, officially designated ‘Mild Tabloid Kerfuffle’.

The first public incidence of the condition saw ‘a disconcerting delay’ observed in the voice of an elderly man in Brighton after watching a housewife neutralise dog odours during the ad break in Countdown. The public is being advised, at the first sign of a hygienically-obsessed housewife or a small South-East Asian boy sitting on the lavatory, to put their fingers in their ears and shout ‘nanananana’ until programming resumes. If the sound comes out as ‘ananananan’ they are to contact their GP immediately.

Reports surfaced after the man was overheard in a cafe admitting that he could ‘take or leave’ the brown toast topping. ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before’ said a face-masked Government official shortly before evacuating the area.

Tests are now being carried out on the man to confirm his indifference, but the World Health Organisation has stressed that at the moment the virus has not reached pandemic proportions. The Government has also confirmed that it will be sending a leaflet to every household providing advice on how to maintain love or hatred for the sandwich filling.