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Were Swine Flu Death Projections Hyped?
Adam Murdock, MD
Campaign For Liberty
Friday, Nov 27th, 2009
The 2009 H1N1 swine flu “pandemic” may turn out to be one of the most overblown and expensive medical crises in modern history. Indeed, this particular swine flu may be one of the weakest in history. The most recent figures show that the number of flu cases are already dropping in the U.S., England, and elsewhere.
It is a mild illness in most but occasionally can lead to severe complications due to bacterial superinfections. In the UK, under 200 people have died from the virus and in the US a debatable 4 thousand people have died. The number of deaths in the US greatly expanded from 1,200 to 4,000 after the CDC recently decided to lump in bacterial infections and “flu-like illnesses” with confirmed swine-flu related deaths.
Even with these inflated numbers, in comparison to previous pandemics or even compared to seasonal flu epidemics, this has been a relatively mild illness. The Spanish H1N1 flu of 1918 was estimated to have killed up to 50 million people. In 1957-58, the Asian HN2 flu caused the death of 1.5 million to 2 million people. Only a decade later, this was followed by the Hong Kong H3N2 in 1968-69 which is thought to be responsible for one million deaths. So far the 2009 H1N1 flu has only been implicated as the cause of death for a few thousand people.
What is striking is that just six months ago, officials in the US and UK were predicting tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of deaths from this swine flu. Since that time officials have had to revise their numbers downward on many occasions.
According to the UK Independent, “Britain’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, published a worst-case scenario suggesting the country should plan for up to 65,000 deaths. That planning assumption has since been revised downwards twice. In September the ‘worst case’ was cut to 19,000 deaths, and in October it was cut again to 1,000 deaths. This compares with an average annual toll of 4,000 to 8,000 deaths from seasonal winter flu.”
A similar revisionist trend has occurred in the United States.
As a result of the original nightmare “pandemic” scenarios, governments around the world have spent billions of dollars to stockpile antivirals (ie. Tamiflu) and to propagandize, produce, and distribute H1N1 vaccinations. The most notable change in how government has tackled this flu emergency has been how they have used the media to spread panic amongst the citizens of the world. Just take the example of Kathleen Sebelius who is the US Health and Human Services (HHS) director. She has publicly gloated over the US Federal Government’s campaign to spread H1N1 flu information on children’s television programming. This has included putting flu messages and even creating whole television shows devoted to government flu propaganda on programs such as Elmo’s World on Sesame Street, Sid the Science Kid, and ESPN. They have also spread their reach into internet social networks like Facebook. In her testimony before Congress, she remarked that she is particularly proud of hearing stories of children that are now correcting their misinformed parents after they had watched the government programming. This propaganda campaign is in addition to direct advertising and almost continuous hysteria from supposed health experts on prime time television. The advice from these individuals is sometimes so obviously biased that it can be nauseating.
How could the estimates have been so wildly exaggerated? Unfortunately, it all comes down to power, money, and prestige. In order to get to the bottom of why swine flu hysteria was so overblown one has to simply ask: Who is profiting from the whole swine flu hysteria?
In answer to that question one has to look no further than the drug companies and the medical research establishment. As I have reported previously, drug companies are in line to make billions of dollars over this pandemic and are preparing to expand vaccinations for years to come. As drug companies have already produced vaccinations for most of the other infectious diseases that cause significant mortality in the western world, they are now looking for a new crop of diseases that could become potential vaccine candidates. In fact, facing the prospect of curtailed drug spending, pharmaceutical companies foresee vaccination expansion as one of their greatest areas of focus and future profit. According to the Associated Press (AP), “vaccines are seen as a critical path to growth for drugmakers, as slowing prescription medicine sales and intensifying generic competition put pressure on company bottom lines.”
In addition to drug companies, as reported in Reuters, medical researchers have had to respond to “accusations” that the “pandemic has been ‘hyped’ by medical researchers to further their own cause, boost research grants and line the pockets of drug companies.” In response to this, researchers have maintained that “we need to know a lot more to conquer the virus, and funding for new research and drugs is vital to be equipped for future pandemics.”
Where this comes full circle is with the government. The great majority of medical research spending is sponsored by government. It is well known that funding from the US National Institute of Health (NIH) and other international governmental bodies favors “pertinent” or as I like to call it “trendy” research. This funding favoritism is especially true of research that can be used to support government policy positions. Most recently, this has been seen in the great expansion of government sponsored global warming research. Now, vaccine experts and their infectious disease cohorts are likely to profit greatly in terms of research grants for preparing for “future pandemics.” One only has to hope that those future pandemics will actually deserve all the attention and expense that this one has.
Finally, central governments profit greatly from supposed pandemics such as this one. It permits them to try to justify their existence as our “great guarantors” of health and safety. It also allows them to continue to expand their tentacles of influence and power to an even greater extent in individual lives as they try to remove our medical freedom by making health care decisions for us. Remember that the government, as President Obama’s top economic advisor Rahm Emanuel puts it, “never” likes to “waste a good crisis” by not effecting a change that they would ordinarily not be able to accomplish. In this case, governments are trying to expand their mandate as the sole provider of health care because they were the only ones able to protect us from a supposedly horrific swine flu pandemic. Even if the truth has been that their efforts have been largely fruitless, the vast majority of people will remain oblivious to this fact. In the future the government will never cease to congratulate itself for coming to our rescue.
The way government has reacted to this flu reminds me greatly of Orwell’s “doublethink” as employed by the totalitarian government in his book Nineteen eighty-four. In terms of the swine flu, the H1N1 “doublethink” means that government says one thing but the reality is the exact opposite. This “doublethink” says that freedom from death from the swine flu means surrendering your medical freedom to a government health bureaucracy. The reality is that government intervention will have proven to do little more then spend our tax dollars and come at the expense of our health care freedom. This is evidenced by the fact the governments have used this mild flu and hysteria surrounding it to create medical emergency acts that would grant powers to forcibly vaccinate citizens despite their objections.
One has to ask the question — would government, researchers, and drug companies been able to justify billions of dollars of expenditures and encroachments on our freedoms if realistic swine flu death projections were used from the beginning? In addition, would the public have been so eager to tune into government and media flu propaganda, or support totalitarian pandemic emergency power bills, or shown up for mass vaccinations if they knew the truth and not the worst? Would they have done any of these things if they had known from the beginning that this pandemic would amount to a few hundred deaths? Surely, the answer would be no.
Many health professionals agree that the original estimates were unreasonably high. According to the UK Independent, “Dr Steven Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘I thought the original predictions for the number of deaths were incredibly high.’”
As with the avian flu scare before it, these groups have great incentive to inflate worst case scenarios because they have the most to profit from the hysteria. There is really no reason why this inflationary pattern will not continue so long as government can use the hysteria to justify increased expansion, drug companies can produce the needed pandemic vaccines, and researchers need a reason to justify massive pandemic research grants.
In the end, I urge you to resist the temptation to sacrifice any of your freedoms for any ounce of government “well-meaning” slavery, especially over a contrived “pandemic’ such as with the 2009 H1N1 swine flu.
Prison
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Well I’m sure they can concoct something much more virulent. They are probably now pouring over the numbers and looking at what else they have in their little bag of tricks.
I don’t trust the people running this place. People for the most part rejected the vaccines. You’d need a crystal ball to know what these perverts have lurking in the recesses of their twisted minds. We need a vaccine for whatever the sickness is that our leaders suffer from.
Che Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Yep Billo, spot on, but to add to that, what if they’re just playing “cry Wolf” with us. So that they’ll release another virus in the near future and they’ll be making the same silly ass assumptions of mass mortality, only that next time it will be true and most people won’t bother to get vaccinated.
Now that, I wouldn’t put past the evil sociopath scum that they are.
Beavis Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Try Amalek…
Beavis Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Try Amalek..
November 27th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Create the hysteria so as to profit from the hysteria. Create the hysteria so as to profit from the hysteria. OKC, 911 Antrhax,, WMD’s, Avian Flu, Swine Flu.
November 27th, 2009 at 10:26 am
It is all a GREAT BIG HYPE. I still am strongly of the opinion that there is NO H1N1 virus out there. I am still of the opinion that at first, in Mexico something was released to kill people to start the fear needed to get these vaccinations into people. I think that they are riding completely on the NORMAL FLU. I want to know where to the samples, or where did the samples go to be tested for swine flu. Dont forget, there are people that if told they are going to get a disease, illness, or virus. THEY WILL!!!! I think the cases in the Ukraine and Iowa (if reports are correct) have been sprayed to keep up the momentum. People are refusing vaccines. Come on say, approx 6000 worldwide dead from a LEVEL 6 pandemic, A BIG SICK JOKE. It all backfired on them. FEAR IS THE GREATEST KILLER.
November 27th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Don’t believe a f---ing word they tell you about this fake bulls--- flu! It’s just the flu! Take Vitamin D and take some Colloidal Silver and forget about their scare tactics! Keep your money and stop giving it to the damned doctors! I haven’t been sick in 2 years!
Macy Willsons Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 11:33 am
it is a huge issue its real joey your a bitch!
November 27th, 2009 at 11:30 am
your wrong its a big issue! you are mean gosh!!!
Tilly Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
You are right, it is a BIG issue, only if you look at the bigger picture. Swine flu is just a little side line of the elite’s to scare us. False flag is on its way. THEN you will realise what a big issue it is. FLU FLU FLU that is all it is. But they tell you it is a deadly virus and YOU WILL GET IT. Get the point?
perfect timing Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
the Swine Flu scare comes just in time to take the heat off the greatest money heist in United States history. Im talking about the banker and wallstreet bailout.
Just like Bin Laden was there to take everyones eye off the ball that was 911,
Swine Flu made a perfectly choreographed entrance.
Remember kids ask not where your money went, or Bin Laden will give you the swine flu booga booga.
November 27th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
From the Dutch RIVM website
The Netherlands as for november 27th 2009:
The hospitalized (?) new infections are down from 359 last week to 289 this week. 8 people died this week from the infection but all had underlaying health problems.
Sofar 1587 people haven been hospitalized and 36 people died. 88% of those allready had underlaying health problems.
It’s a good thing we spent € 600.000.000 on vaccin……LOL! But maybe they’ve got a third wave planned..
Source (Dutch) http://www.rivm.nl/cib/binarie.....-61018.pdf
November 27th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I just dont get it…I dont know any one who has had the swine flu…I dont even know any one who knows anyone..that has had it…yet they are spending millions of dollars on this so called pandemic. yet over 60.000 people a year die of pneunia….I know thats spelled wrong….any way why do we get so excited for something so minor
Tilly Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Hi Ron
Neither do I. I know of no-one that has had it. Or friends, friends of friends etc
all a big hype
November 27th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
the entire thing has been another obamacare lie………good god you lefties are sooooo transparent.
November 27th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Alot of kids have had h1n1 around me. Get your head out of the sand. It’s here. Maybe the health agencies actually did a great job this time in containing it. Just because millions didn’t die doesn’t mean we should ignore it next time. So many delusional mentally ill people think the government is out to get them. Watching too many movies. Obama doesn’t really have anything to do with this so stop blaming the President. Crazy people.
November 27th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
WE’RE CHATTING RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!
http://chat.umunu.com/
JOE BLOW CONSPIRACY SHOW IS LIVE
http://www.jbstream.net/tunein.....aylist.asx
November 27th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Does the pope commune with the bears.. but seriously,
This whole thing has stacked up to be a fraud,
one which had as its objective to commit genocide.
In light of that observation the matter of fudging the projections
looks rather pale (valid, not unimportant, just.. pale
John
November 27th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Does the pope commune with the bears.. but seriously,
This whole thing has stacked up to be a fraud,
one which had as its objective to commit genocide.
In light of that observation the matter of fudging the projections
looks rather pale (valid, not unimportant, just.. pale
John
November 28th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Hype??.. tell that to the families of the 7,000+ that are already dead, it’s mutated spreading from persaon to person, this could well be the next global plague, be afraid, be very afraid!
Then again this beautiful gem of a planet is well over-populated and infested with humans anyway, it’a about time this poor world has had a breathing space.
November 28th, 2009 at 10:17 am
The probability of a truly deadly flu evolving in any given year is very small. However, the consequences could be sever. Those who are responsible for public health, have no way of knowing what will happen in advance so they must prepare for the worst. No one visiting this site has suffered from small pox, nor are you subject to polio any longer. The people you have to thank for your ignorant asses being alive, are those same public health authorities whose methods have eradicated small pox from the wild and almost eradicated polio. You owe them your thanks rather than your ignorant ridicule. Doubtful a seriously deadly flu will circulate in my lifetime, but if it does, I dare to say it will be very entertaining to listen to all you conspiracy spouting types, whining and begging for someone in public health, to come and save your sorry asses.