Even if there is a small rise this winter, it is unlikely that influenza will return to anything like pre-Covid levels, when in a bad year it could kill around 30,000 people.
Yes, hospitals face a backlog of operations built up during the period when the NHS became the National Covid Service. But while delaying operations such as cancer surgery is not an option, some elective procedures will just have to be postponed until the spring, because it is impossible to carry on completely as normal at a time of national emergency.
One of the worst aspects of the current alarmism is how it will be used to block reform in the NHS. Buttressed by sentimentality and BBC cheerleading, the health service pretends its problems can only ever be solved by more money.
But the truth is, extra funding can actually worsen its inadequacies by entrenching the interests of its workforce over its patients and perpetuating flawed structures, sprawling bureaucracies and chronic inefficiencies.
We could do so much better if the blind NHS-worship and incessant gloom-mongering were dropped. The cycle of manufactured crisis only lowers staff morale, leaves the public fearful and inhibits the drive for vital change.
ANGUS DALGLEISH is a professor of oncology at a London teaching hospital.