UK Hysterical Over Bird Flu & Tamiflu?

Judging by a column by Camille Cavendish in Times Online, the Brits are taking this H5N1 mutation possibility pretty seriously -- much more seriously than us Yanks. Her whole column is worth reading, but here's the part that I find a bit hard to believe:

A colleague at work, who got onto the Roche website too late, muttered “at least I know where you live” in a tone that was only half-joking. Another has been cosying up to civil servant friends who she thinks will have secret supplies. A friend in Fulham has just scored the last box of Tamiflu from a nearby chemist, a man who claimed he had been keeping it under the counter waiting for a “normal local mother” to come along. He didn’t spot that she had been transformed by worry into a ferocious hunter-gatherer, willing to defend her cubs at all costs — or at least thirty quid per cub.

Any comments from UK readers on whether this Tamiflu searching/hoarding is an accurate barometer of the public mood?