swine flu panic

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.

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.

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.

Flu Watch Dec. 24 – The U.S. Epidemic is Over

by Michael Fumento on December 27, 2009

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

The Big Scare of 2009 is over, folks. The U.S. swine flu epidemic has ended.

“The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) was below the epidemic threshold,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website Fluview and this chart shows it.

New infections continued to drop this week to only 306 reported by CDC-monitored labs, compared to 1,370 just three weeks before and 11,470 at the height of the epidemic. That’s a plummet of over 97% from the height. Deaths and hospitalizations have plummeted to merely 20 and 313 respectively, compared to 85 and 982 just a week earlier and compared to 189 and 4,970 at the peak in October.
Remember that according to CDC estimates, about 257 Americans die of seasonal flu per day during flu season. Mind you, the swine flu deaths are actual while the seasonal flu ones are estimates so it’s not a completely apples-to-apples comparison.

Only 7 states still report widespread activity, down from 11 last week. The American College Health Association did not report new numbers this week, presumably because of the Christmas holiday.

Repeat, the swine flu epidemic is over.

So where do we go from here? No, unfortunately not to zero. Instead we’re at what’s called an “endemic” level. We can expect infections, hospitalizations, and deaths to continue at something the same rate as this last week until the end of flu season in April.

Judging by what we’ve seen so far in the U.S. and the experiences in New Zealand and Australia, we are in for an extremely mild flu season overall. That’s because swine flu is more contagious than the far deadlier seasonal flu, essentially muscling it aside. People inoculated with swine flu infection don’t get the seasonal flu.

So while you may recall all those “excess” deaths we were supposed to be getting from swine flu (30,000 to 90,000 according to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and “89,000 to 207,000″ according to flu book author John Barry, we will actually get far fewer flu deaths overall both worldwide and in the U.S. because of swine flu.

While the media are finally beginning to admit that the World Health Organization’s swine flu “pandemic,” made possible only by completely redefining the definition, may be the mildest in history, they are not willing to admit that we will actually have fewer flu deaths internationally because of this alleged pandemic.

Yes, folks, the WHO and the media really did pull a fast one on us.

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.

“WHO Should Just Give Up on the Flu Scare,” my National Post piece

by Michael Fumento on December 5, 2009

in Health and Illness

The folks who dubbed the swine flu piglet a pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO), just won’t let up.

“It is too early to say whether there has yet been a peak in infections in the northern hemisphere,” Reuters paraphrased the WHO as saying, “and it will be some weeks before there is a downward trend in the numbers of those catching the virus.”

Wrong across the board for both Canada and the U.S.

In the U.S., flu deaths and hospitalizations have declined for the third straight week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Regarding Canada specifically, the WHO claims “influenza activity remains similar but [the] number of hospitalizations and deaths is increasing.” But Health Canada’s FluWatch website, updated weekly, begs to differ.

Yes, all indicators have been dropping in Canada, as well. Just what part of “all” doesn’t the WHO understand? Read more in my National Post article.

Flu Watch Dec. 4 – What Swine Flu ISN’T Doing this Week

by Michael Fumento on December 4, 2009

in Health and Illness

The epidemic has plunged so far that it’s on the borderline of no longer being one. An epidemic, that is. It’s right on the threshold. Deaths are down for the third week in a row and hospitalizations for the fourth week.

But this last week has been a real doozy, with deaths down by more than two thirds and hospitalizations more than 50%. Only half the states now have “widespread activity.” Positive flu samples analyzed at CDC-monitored laboratories are down 92% since the peak of the epidemic, and are at the lowest since flu season began eight weeks ago.

Finally, the dreaded swine flu continues to not wipe out the younger generation. Reports of CDC-defined “influenza-like illness” are down 69% this week on college campuses just from last week, and are just 14% what they were at the height.

At this rate, the swine flu epidemic will be over by next week. Stay tuned for what isn’t happening with swine flu!

What about a “second wave” of swine flu?

by Michael Fumento on December 4, 2009

in Health and Illness

Mr. Fumento,

I read your articles religiously. You recently attacked swine flu as hysterical overreaction.

Is it really? You talk about a bell curve when it comes to epidemics. how about talk of a second wave? Is it really hype as you say? Take a look at this link:

[It regards swine flu hospitalizations hitting a new high in California.]

What is your opinion on this?

This was the second wave, remember? It was predictable because the flu likes cold. After the first wave it got warmer then colder. But now it’s just steadily going to get colder. So the next “wave” will be next fall, by which time swine flu will BE our seasonal flu. Which is good, because it’s so much milder than the currently seasonal flu strains.

And regarding the link, there are four measurements of swine flu impact: infections, hospitalizations, deaths, and emergency room visits. Infections and deaths are the same, because they’re direct. But with hospitalizations and emergency room visits it simply means somebody made a decision based on worry. Also, the figure applies to only one state albeit the largest state. My data are for the nation as a whole and as of today, they show hospitalization rates have declined for the fourth straight week and indeed are less than half what they were just a week ago.

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.

Flu Report Nov. 21 and my piece on the epidemic peak in NRO.

by Michael Fumento on November 20, 2009

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

“Swine flu has killed 540 kids, sickened 22 million Americans,” screamed USA Today’s page 1 headline, sub-headed “CDC: Cases, Deaths are Unprecedented.” “Swine flu cases in the U.S. are rising at the fastest pace for influenza in four decades,” breathlessly declares a Bloomberg News article lede. Another article’s title referred to a “national swine flu spike.”

Scary stuff! Phony stuff! And a desperate effort to distract from an alarmist media’s greatest nightmare: That the epidemic has peaked, as I write in National Review Online.

Yet the mainstream may possibly, maybe, sorta, be starting to catch on.

“Health officials say swine flu cases appear to declining throughout most of the U.S.,” reports AP. But, making evident its reporter hadn’t actually bothered to look at the data or try to comprehend it, the story concluded “They say it’s hard to know whether the epidemic has peaked or not, and many people will be gathering – and spreading germs – next week at Thanksgiving.” Well, there you go, there is a possible  exception to the rule of infectious disease epidemic curves known as Farr’s law. It’s called “Thanksgiving.”

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