swine flu pandemic

Science Credibility Flu Away – At Least in Europe

by Michael Fumento on September 29, 2010

in Health and Illness

Throughout the phony flu pandemic I warned that health officials would lose credibility because basically everything they were telling us was false and, unlike with some phony predictions which are safely years away, these quickly be shown false.

Turns out I was right — depending on what part of the world you live in.

A combined Scientific American/Nature magazine poll shows that of the 15 issues people were asked about, they trusted scientists the least regarding flu pandemics. Ah, but there’s a big asterisk. It was a poll of both Europeans and Americans. And only 29 percent of the Americans expressed serious distrust, compared to 69 percent of the Europeans.

Why the difference? The very media I was constantly criticizing. While a number of journalists and publications in Europe were critical of the WHO and their own governments, the American media acted as a mouthpiece for anybody — official or otherwise — willing to say something scary about swine flu.

More to the point, they’ve continued to do so. Nobody in this country has issued a mea culpa and nobody ever will, anymore than they did with heterosexual AIDS, SARS, avian flu and so many other hysterias they either perpetuated or outright fomented. Most recently it’s been Toyota. The motto of the American media, originally uttered in a John Wayne movie, is: “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”

Pack journalism is so pervasive in America we’ve practically got the equivalent of a state run media. And because of that, eventually it will be a state run media.

WHO swine flu chief caught twice lying about pre-fab pandemic

by Michael Fumento on January 28, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness

Even before the World Health Organization declared its phony pandemic last summer, its designated fibber-in-chief has been Keiji Fukuda. Yet I’ve never been able to catch him a lie so explicit that he couldn’t somehow worm out of it. Till now.

Thus when he said (and still does), the virus may be mild now but it could mutate to become worse I would point out that this would be the first time a flu virus has suddenly changed course like that. But technically he was right. Finally, I’ve caught him with his nose stretched out three feet long – and on a vital issue.

As I pointed out upon the WHO’s pandemic declaration in June, the definition previously required “enormous numbers of deaths.” But the agency desperately wanted a pandemic and swine flu, vastly milder than ordinary flu, clearly didn’t fit. So they simply penned a new definition to match swine flu, making deaths irrelevant and explicitly declaring “mild” strains would qualify.

Since flu always strikes throughout the world, the only reasonable distinction between a normal year and a pandemic year is severity. So clearly this was politically motivated, and I’ve addressed those motivations. They include everything from power grabbing and money grubbing to a hard left agenda of redistributing wealth and instituting “social justice.”

Now the WHO is defending itself against charges of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that it created a “false pandemic” in “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” To which the WHO disingenuously responds that it is a real pandemic – by its fresh and nonsensical interpretation.

But the WHO can’t change what the old definition said. At the PACE hearing, though, Fukuda boldly told the assembled experts, reporters, and, yes, cameramen: “Having severe deaths has never been part of the WHO definition.”

Here’s a snapshot of the WHO definition, also viewable at the agency’s Web site, at the very time swine flu broke out.

who-pandemic-definition-2005

Moreover, at a “virtual press conference” ten days earlier, he stated: “Did WHO change its definition of a pandemic? The answer is no, WHO did not change its definition.” The man is an arrogant lying machine.

First WHO Director-General Margaret Chan needs to fire Fukuda. And then she needs to fire herself.

Flu expert slams WHO pandemic panic-mongering in German magazine interview

by Michael Fumento on January 27, 2010

in Health and Illness

I missed this interview when it came out in the German magazine Der Spiegel in July, but it’s still relevant. Unfortunately, even though the interview subject Tom Jefferson of the esteemed Cochrane Collaboration is an American, you’re not going to find anything like this in a U.S. publication. Our media bought into the scare lock, stock, and virion and they’re not going to admit they were wrong. Herewith some excerpts.

SPIEGEL: Do you consider the swine flu to be particularly worrisome?

Jefferson : It’s true that influenza viruses are unpredictable, so it does call for a certain degree of caution. But one of the extraordinary features of this influenza — and the whole influenza saga — is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn’t stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.

SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?

Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.

SPIEGEL: Do you think the WHO declared a pandemic prematurely?

Jefferson: Don’t you think there’s something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn’t have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped, and that’s how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.

Flu Watch Jan. 24, 2010 – Swine flu appears to be sweeping aside seasonal flu

by Michael Fumento on January 24, 2010

in Health and Illness

Reported infections, deaths, hospitalizations all down. Again, though, when adjusted for the time lag they were probably the same as last week. The only thing that still interests me is the percentage of non-swine flu infections. That’s because, as I’ve noted, in countries like Australia and New Zealand, swine flu simply swept the seasonal flu aside. The result was a tremendous reduction in flu deaths as the milder swine flu inoculated people against the deadlier seasonal flu.

I repeatedly predicted we would see the same here and again this week we see evidence of that. Of the infections reported to the CDC labs last week, only four were clearly not swine flu. And here we are in mid-January, approaching what is normally the peak of seasonal flu season (mid-February).

Here’s a report from the Jan. 20 Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

“In ordinary years, the first seasonal flu cases typically show up in December and start mounting in January, said Richard Danila, deputy state epidemiologist. But so far, “there’s been virtually zero” confirmed cases of seasonal influenza, he said. ‘It’s really surprising.’” [Ahem! It wouldn't be if he'd been reading my material!]

Danila said he’s never seen seasonal flu wait this long to make an appearance, adding: “But no one’s willing to say that it won’t come.”

Flu experts speculate the H1N1 virus may end up wiping out other strains of flu, in classic Darwinian fashion.

“Seasonal flu didn’t find a niche and still hasn’t found a niche yet of susceptible people,” Danila said.

More swine flu hysteria apologism – “a stunning public health success”

by Michael Fumento on January 19, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

In response to my Philadelphia Inquirer piece “Swine Flu Epidemic Ends with a Whimper,” predictably public health community members have squealed that the only reason the disease proved so mild is because of their own Herculean efforts. I saw the same thing with heterosexual AIDS and SARS. So it was that Steven J. Barrer, M.D. wrote to the newspaper:

Michael Fumento’s assertion that the swine flu epidemic predicted for this flu season was a medical scandal ignores the enormous effort of the country’s public-health sector to mitigate the potential seriousness of this disease.

Vaccine production was accelerated, public education was aggressive, and awareness was heightened worldwide. Every physician I know made an effort to educate patients. Fumento also belittles simple efforts such as hand sanitizer, but that, and frequent hand-washing, muffling sneezes in your arm rather than hand, and minimizing casual physical contact, are widely credited with reducing the spread of contagious disease.

They are among the efforts hospitals are using, successfully, to reduce their infection rates.

Diseases don’t go away. We just get better at dealing with them. I consider the mildness of this flu season a stunning public-health success.

Yet as my piece noted the epidemic peaked in mid-October, before anybody was vaccinated. It also observed that Australia and New Zealand had remarkably mild epidemics that ended before any vaccine was available.

Hand sanitizer and handwashing appears to have no impact on the spread of flu, as this article discusses. I found a recent medical journal article claiming to show that it does help, but when you actually look at their data you see they provided good evidence that it does not. If that’s the best they can do, it tells you something.

Handwashing was basically thrown at the public as a talisman and because, lacking a vaccine, the public health community and especially the CDC felt it had to offer something for the public to do, even if it was worthless. (Also, handwashing does protect against colds and food poisoning.)

In light of this, it’s hard to see how mealy-mouthed terms like “aggressiveness” and “awareness” played any role. The simple fact, as I took great pains to note, is that swine flu has a vastly milder impact on the immune system than seasonal flu. I’ve even explained why, that we’ve been exposed to H1N1 viruses as part of the seasonal flu since 1997. That also explains why children are disproportionately affected. Where did I first write this? In the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

So that’s it. End of ball game. The WHO knew the score when it declared its pandemic. And doctors like Barrer could have known this because they had access to the same medical literature that I had access to in which fatality rates were compared – and he had access to my previous Philly Inquirer piece that also discussed these rates. I did Barrer’s research for him.

Finally, diseases obviously do just go away. Every year, in countries with or with flu vaccine, in times before vaccines existed, influenza has struck, crested, and then faded away. What did medical science do to make the Spanish flu disappear in 1919?

Public health has done many wonderful things in this country. How much do you worry about smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, yellow fever, or any number of other diseases that used to sweep through this country periodically like a scythe? But the swine flu hoax is a serious black eye – as was hetero AIDS, SARS, and most recently avian flu – and no amount of wriggling and rationalization will change that.

Flu Watch Jan. 14 – What Swine Flu ISN’T Doing this week

by Michael Fumento on January 15, 2010

in Health and Illness

Infections are down, hospitalizations are down and deaths are the same. But given the reporting time lag it should prove that these were all about the same as last week. Last week one state reported widespread flu, this week none do. As I’ve written, we’re now at an endemic stage where cases pretty much trot along at the same pace. Again, it might pick up some in February because that’s when it gets coldest and flu, unlike your humble blogger, loves cold weather.

Only 1.4% of infections reported were clearly not swine flu, indicating that so far, as I’ve reported has been the case in Australia and New Zealand, swine flu is muscling aside the deadlier seasonal flu strains – and hence will make for a light flu season.

The CDC has also released a new estimate of infections and deaths, namely 55 million and 11,161 respectively since last April. That keeps the death rate about about 1 per 5,000 or a third to a tenth that of seasonal flu. Meanwhile the World Health Organization is defending itself against charges that it created a phony pandemic, including using the predictable line that one reason the flu has proved so mild is because the WHO did such a splendid job! I address that lunacy elsewhere.

It’s getting kind of dull in here, folks. So I’m discontinuing the weekly watch but I will keep blogging and otherwise writing on the faux pandemic.

Flu Watch Jan. 8 – What Swine Flu ISN’T Doing this week

by Michael Fumento on January 8, 2010

in Health and Illness

These things just keep getting briefer and briefer. Infections down, deaths down to only 14, states with widespread activity: just one.

Updating you on an earlier blog, the chairman of the influential health committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has asked the body to investigate what he calls the WHO’s “false pandemic.” An epidemiologist no less, he calls it “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.”

You heard it here first, folks!

“Was Swine Flu a False Pandemic?”

by Michael Fumento on January 4, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

No, that’s not Michael Fumento asking. It’s a pharmaceutical industry blog declaring, “That’s the contention by more than a dozen members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which reportedly plans to conduct an inquiry into the influence that drugmakers may have had on the World Health Organization, scientists and governments. A resolution was introduced last month by Wolfgang Wodarg, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party who chairs the Parliamentary health committee.”

I won’t weigh in on the secondary question. Lots of people had a hand in pushing a pandemic. But it remains that the World Health Organization was given and took upon itself sole authority to actually declare the pandemic. That’s where initial attention should be focused. They rewrote the definition so that they could declare what was clearly a very mild strain of flu to be the first pandemic in 40 years, causing a cascade of events that haunts us still and will do so long into the future. They need to be called to account.

Flu Watch Dec. 30 – What Swine Flu ISN’T Doing

by Michael Fumento on January 2, 2010

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

It’s a holiday so we’ll make this quick. Infections have somehow managed to drop again as have deaths and hospitalizations. Just 15 deaths reported this past week, versus 257 a week for seasonal flu during the season. Only four states reported widespread flu activity. Early January is when seasonal flu normally really gets going so we might see something of a bounce up in the next couple of weeks, especially since at 15 deaths there’s nowhere to go but up. But it shouldn’t be by much. Swine flu came in 2009 like a piglet and went out like a piglet.

Swine flu also unexceptional in contagiousness

by Michael Fumento on December 30, 2009 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

With a massive amount of data indicating swine flu is vastly milder than seasonal flu, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine also puts the kibosh on the claims that it spreads like gangbusters.

Researchers found that in households in which one person had swine flu it spread to 10 percent of other household members. During the flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, 14 percent to 20 percent of household members were infected while normal seasonal flu spreads to 5 percent to 40 percent of the rest of the family.

In other words, once again we see there is absolutely nothing “pandemic” about swine flu. It’s a term the World Health Organization applied to serve its own interests. It would serve our interests to replace the WHO with a body that cares more about health than politics and power-seeking.

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