pandemic influenza

Flu Watch Dec. 18 – What Swine Flu ISN’T Doing this Week

by Michael Fumento on December 18, 2009 · 2 comments

in Odds & Ends

New infections continued to drop, down this week to only 391 reported by CDC-monitored labs, compared to 1,370 just two weeks before and 11,470 at the height of the epidemic. So that’s a plummet of over 96% from the height. Deaths and hospitalizations are less than half those of last week, and while formerly the CDC refrained from releasing exact numbers it’s now doing so. So the exact number of deaths for last week is 56.

Remember that according to CDC estimates, about 257 Americans die of seasonal flu per day during flu season. Of course, the swine flu deaths are actual while the seasonal flu ones are estimates so it’s not a completely apples-to-apples comparison.

Only 11 states still report widespread activity, down slightly from 14 last weeks.

Finally, cases do continue to come in at above the epidemic threshold nationally. On college campuses it’s a different picture, though. College cases of CDC-defined “influenza-like illness” are definitely at an endemic level, having dropped all the way down to 4.1 cases per 10,000 slightly up to 5.2 and then slightly down to 3.4 They should stay more or less in that range for the rest of the flu season with perhaps higher cases coming in February at the peak of the normal seasonal flu season. Colleges are still reporting only three deaths out of more than 87,000 cases.

No, swine flu isn’t doing much this week. And that’s its future. It’s just plain lazy, happy to roll around in the mud while infecting impressive numbers of people but killing very few. Too bad it can’t kill the reputations of the doomsayers who declared it a “pandemic” and compared it to the horrible Spanish flu of 1918-1919.

Post Promotes Pig Pandemic Panic . . . and promotes and promotes . . .

by Michael Fumento on November 25, 2009

in Odds & Ends

Following in an unpublished letter to the editor of the Washington Post.

“Panic is what we want,” declared Anne Applebaum of the swine flu in the Post Opinion pages in May. “Panic is good.” The next month John Barry told Opinion readers to expect “89,000 to 207,000” swine flu deaths. In August, Opinions ran Jorge R. Mancillas’ piece warning of “between 9 million and 10 million” swine flu deaths worldwide.

There have been no Opinions pieces critical of swine flu hype.

Now the CDC estimates that in five and a half months swine flu has killed 4,000 Americans, while plain old seasonal flu annually kills about 36,000 over a five-month season. Worldwide, as of November 13, the World Health Organization (WHO) says only that swine flu is known to have killed over 6,250 people in seven months, even while it estimates seasonal flu kills 4,800 to 9,600 every seven days.

Aha! But Posteconomics writer Alan Sipress warns Opinion readers that if the do-nothing avian flu (the WHO says it’s been infecting poultry and hence making bird-human contact since at least 1959) were to combine with the lazy swine flu, the outcome could be “savage,” a “real nightmare.” (“Playing Chicken with the Flu,” November 15). Yes, and if Godzilla could rise from the deep he could destroy Tokyo!

Enough already! The point is made. And it says nothing about the swine flu but everything about the Post Opinions page.

[Not incidentally, I know they don't run anti-panic op-eds because in addition to this letter I sent them two. One was specific to the Post, but the second one was not and later appeared in the much-larger circulation Los Angeles Times.

Obama’s swine flu “emergency” declaration

by Michael Fumento on October 25, 2009 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness

It’s a bunch of hog droppings. Watch for my upcoming article. In the meantime, read here on why we should not panic.