Michael Fumento

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.

Read more…

“Greatest medical scandal of the century” to come under scrutiny

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, has begun hearings to investigate whether the H1N1 swine flu pandemic was falsified or exaggerated in an attempt to profit from vaccine sales.

A PACE resolution, passed last month, gave context to the hearings which began yesterday in Strasbourg.

“In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The “bird-flu”-campaign (2005/06) combined with the “swine-flu”-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health-budgets, but to the credibility and accountability of important international health-agencies.”

Heading the hearings will be chairman of the Health Committee of PACE, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a former German lawmaker, a medical doctor and epidemiologist. Wodarg has referred to the swine flu pandemic as “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”

Wodarg charges that the WHO altered the definition of a pandemic from an outbreak in several continents at once with an above-average death rate, to one where the spread of the disease is constant.

The Parliamentary inquiry will determine if a “falsified pandemic” was declared by WHO in June 2009 on the advice of medical advisors, many of whom have close financial ties to the very pharmaceutical giants – GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, – that produced the H1N1 vaccines.

It will also look into the controversy surrounding the fact that two shots were initially advised when it was later revealed that one dose was entirely suitable.

Pharmaceutical companies are thought to have made a profit of somewhere in the region of $7.5-$10 billion on H1N1 vaccines. The worldwide death toll from H1N1 is thought to be around 13,500, just over a third of the number who die from regular flu every year in the U.S. alone.

Read more…

Mike Adams
Natural News
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

The great swine flu hoax of 2009 is now falling apart at the seams as one country after another unloads hundreds of millions of doses of unused swine flu vaccines. No informed person wants the injection anymore, and the entire fear-based campaign to promote the vaccines has now been exposed as outright quackery and propaganda.

Even doctors are now calling the pandemic a complete hoax. As reported on FoxNews, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a leading health authority in Europe, says that drug companies “organized a ‘campaign of panic’ to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic. He believes it is ‘one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,’ and he has called for an inquiry.” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933…)

H1N1 swine flu was never dangerous, and it never should have been escalated to a level-six pandemic in the first place. It was all a big marketing scam whose purpose was to simply sell vaccines. (And the CDC and WHO were in on it…)

And it worked! Big Pharma made out with billions of dollars in profits for a useless vaccine that’s now being dumped by the truck load. These vaccines were, of course, paid for with taxpayer dollars, making the Great Swine Flu Hoax of 2009 nothing more than an elaborate financial scam whose goal was to transfer wealth from the People to the shareholders of Big Pharma.

In just the fourth quarter of 2009, GlaxoSmithKline shipped $1.4 billion worth of vaccines. (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS…)

That’s $1.4 billion worth of taxpayer dollars, by the way. Dollars that could have been spent on nutrition or real health education. $1.4 billion worth of free vitamin D supplements would have done far more to protect public health than vaccines could ever hope to accomplish.

A bailout for Big Pharma

Wall Street hucksters have nothing on Big Pharma, the CDC and the WHO, all of which conspired to mislead the public and generate irrational fear in order to make money selling people vaccine shots they never needed in the first place.

The drug companies raked in billions of dollars in revenues while providing a product that offered absolutely no net reduction in mortality. In fact, as the long-term side effects of the vaccines remain unknown, it could turn out that the vaccines actually result in a net increase in mortality.

Read more…

Michael Fumento

Hidden within the latest edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s FluView was this sentence: “The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was below the epidemic threshold.”

That’s right: The great American swine flu epidemic – which led to two proclaimed national emergencies and thousands of spooky news stories – has ended with a whimper.

Only 161 new infections were reported to CDC-monitored labs last week, compared to 11,470 at the epidemic’s mid-October peak. Only one state (Alabama) still reports “widespread activity.” Deaths and hospitalizations were 14 and 374, respectively, compared to 189 and 4,970 a week at the peak. To put that in perspective, the CDC estimates that an average of 257 Americans normally die of seasonal flu every day during the season, or about 36,000 a year.

Like all infectious disease epidemics, swine flu followed a bell curve. It peaked in mid-October, before anybody was vaccinated.

Repeat, the American portion of the first flu pandemic declared in four decades – which just weeks ago spawned such headlines as “CDC: Cases, Deaths Are Unprecedented” – is over.

So where do the swine flu numbers go from here? Not to zero, unfortunately. Rather, we’re at what’s called an “endemic” level: We can expect infections, hospitalizations, and deaths to continue at something similar to the current rate until the end of flu season, in the spring. (That means there’s still plenty of time to get your shot if you haven’t yet been infected or vaccinated yet.)

But, judging by what we’ve seen so far in the United States and elsewhere in the world, especially in New Zealand and Australia, the flu season will continue to be quite mild. In both of those Southern Hemisphere countries, where winter has ended, there have been far fewer flu deaths than was normal during their past seasonal flu epidemics. Yet swine flu accounted for virtually all their cases, and no vaccine was available. In addition, these countries saw the season peak only once, without the “next wave” we’ve been warned of.

Why were there so few flu deaths? First, swine flu is vastly milder than the seasonal variety. According to the latest CDC estimate, while seasonal flu kills between one in 480 to one in 1,700 Americans infected, swine flu has killed only one person for every 5,000 infections. (Even that estimate is probably high, given the vastly lower death rates in comparable industrialized nations, such as France and Japan.)

Second, swine flu is more contagious than the seasonal flu strains, essentially muscling them aside. And people infected with swine flu appear to be immune to seasonal flu, just as the mild cowpox virus inoculated people against the fearsome smallpox virus (as the famed vaccine inventor Edward Jenner noted). Of those 161 new flu cases reported to the CDC last week, only four clearly weren’t swine flu.

You may recall all those additional deaths we were supposed to suffer as a result of swine flu – 30,000 to 90,000, according to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (a number I previously disputed); or “89,000 to 207,000,” according to an op-ed by author John Barry. But like New Zealand and Australia, the United States can actually expect considerably fewer overall flu deaths because of the swine flu.

Read more…

ABCNews.com

By JOSEPH BROWNSTEIN
ABC News Medical Unit
Jan. 20, 2010

When staff members at a Wellesley, Mass., school went to the nurse last Friday, they expected to be injected with a vaccine for the H1N1 flu. What they received instead was a shot of insulin resulting in a bout with low blood sugar.

While the staffers seem to be suffering no long-term damage from mistakenly receiving the insulin injections, investigations are ongoing to determine what caused the medical error. Indications thus far have been that a school nurse was responsible. The nurse has been temporarily relieved of duty.

While ABC News contacted people at the departments of health for the town of Wellesley and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the Wellesley School District, it remains unclear how the flu vaccine, which can be distributed in pre-filled syringes or vials, was mistaken for insulin, which is drawn from a vial because each dose needs to be calibrated when it is given.

Such errors have happened before. This past fall, a number of people in the neighboring town of Needham received a seasonal flu vaccine in place of the H1N1 vaccines they were supposed to receive. And in 2007, a teacher in the nearby town of Attleboro also received an injection of insulin instead of the intended flu shot.

MailOnline – UK

By Fiona Macrae and Sophie Borland
Last updated at 12:38 PM on 14th January 2010

More than half the scientists on the swine flu taskforce advising the Government have ties to drug companies.

Eleven of the 20 members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) have done work for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their universities.

Many have declared interests in GlaxoSmithKline, the vaccine maker expected to be the biggest beneficiary of the pandemic.

The disclosure of the register of interests comes just days after a health expert branded the swine flu outbreak a ‘false pandemic’ driven by the drug companies which stood to profit.

The Government is now trying to offload up to £1billion worth of unwanted swine flu vaccine.

Last July, the Department of Health warned of up 65,000 deaths, with 350 a day at the pandemic’s peak. But the death toll now stands at just 251.

SAGE was created to give Ministers recommendations on how to control and treat the virus.

Official documents show some members are linked to vaccine manufacturer Baxter and to Roche, which makes Tamiflu.

GSK, Baxter and Roche stand to make up to £1.5billion between them from Government contracts related to swine flu.

The scientists declared the interests to the Department of Health.

They were not obliged to declare the amounts they earned but they are thought to range from around £500 for a lecture or presentation to more than £100,000 for a directorship of GSK. 

Some will simply be heads of university research departments which received funding from companies.

Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb said last night: ‘While there is no evidence that experts acted improperly, the sheer scale of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence is a cause for concern and needs to be looked at.’

However, some researchers said industry experience could only add to the scientists’ knowledge, enabling them to provide the best and the most up-to-date advice.

Leading flu expert Professor John Oxford said it was right to have people with different types of experience.

He said: ‘If you are giving advice about vaccines or anti-viral drugs, you can’t sit in your ivory tower and think you know everything about it.’

One of the biggest earners on SAGE is the former rector of Imperial College, London, Professor Sir Roy Anderson. He is a non-executive director of GSK which also makes Relenza, the Tamiflu alternative for pregnant women.

GSK strongly denied any conflict of interest.

It said Sir Roy was asked to rejoin SAGE, which he had left to join GSK, because of his expertise.

The company said: ‘He has not attended any meetings related to purchase of drugs or vaccine for either the government or GSK.’

Dr Stephen Inglis of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control has interests in more than 40 drug companies, all connected to the NIBSC rather than himself. Read more…

Telegraph.co.uk

By James Delingpole

Journalist dies, oinking horribly, after failing to take Swine Flu seriously. That was the title I gave one of my first Telegraph blogs – April 27th 2009 – well aware that I was offering up a tremendous hostage to fortune. My how they would all have laughed darkly if I’d caught swine flu and died! But I didn’t, did I? And nor strangely did you.

Here are some of the comments that appeared below the blog:

Here’s a very angry science expert who signs herself Kaytie:

“James Delingpole is a dolt and…it’s well worth spending quite a bit of resource on stockpiling Tamiflu and Relenza even when the stockpiles have a shelf-life and have to be regularly replaced.”

Here’s Redking:

by Michael Fumento

Inevitably when pandemic doom fails to pan out, whether it be heterosexual AIDS, SARS, avian flu, or anything else the public health establishment that panicked everyone will claim that the only reason their predictions didn’t prevail was fast action on their part. So it was inevitable with swine flu, as we’re told in an article with the sub-headline: “If You Warn of An H1N1 Epidemic But Stop It, Do You Get Credit?”

Professor Robert Field of the Drexel University School of Public Health tells ABC News online that his poor fellows were, as the piece put it, “damned if they do and damned if they don’t.” According to the story, with the subtitle of “Public health officials faced a tough choice in May and June,” “to some extent, we may be seeing a milder epidemic than we feared because of the vaccine and other measures people are taking” says Field.

Pouring on the unmitigated gall, he added: “It’s so easy to be a victim of your own success.”

As they say in The Valley, “Gag me with a spoon!” As I’ve written, the epidemic here peaked in mid-October. Nobody had vaccine immunity in this country then. Nobody. Australia and New Zealand had incredibly mild flu seasons even though almost all of the flu was of the H1N1 swine variety and there was no vaccine even available until the seasons ended. Even now, relatively few Americans have gotten the shot and according to news accounts they’re not going to. More and more are claiming they’ve been bamboozled.

Moreover, there were people in May and June who relayed evidence that swine flu was proving to be extremely mild. Well, there was one person at least. Me.

My first published article on the subject, with the telling title “The Price of a Porcine Panic,” appeared June 1. I said it would ridiculous for the WHO to declare a pandemic, and as soon as it did I wrote why it had been ridiculous. It was obviously milder than seasonal flu, when heretofore flu pandemics were defined by extreme severity.

Later on, as the data, came in, I documented how vastly milder swine flu was. This was before the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology made its incredible prediction of 30,000 to 90,000 deaths.

No, the public health establishment bungled at best and lied at worst. I’ve written 14 articles at countless blogs about it. Don’t let them off the hook this time.

Reuters

GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization is to examine its handling of the H1N1 pandemic, the group said on Tuesday, after accusations by some politicians that it exaggerated the dangers of the virus under pressure from drug companies.

The United Nations health agency will review the way it dealt with the outbreak of swine flu once the pandemic has subsided, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing.

“Criticism is part of an outbreak cycle. We expect and indeed welcome criticism and the chance to discuss it,” she said, adding the WHO’s review would involve independent outside experts and its results would be made public.

But she said it was too soon to say when the examination would take place or which experts would be involved.

In the latest complaint about the way authorities have dealt with the pandemic, the Council of Europe, a political forum of most European countries, is to determine whether drug companies influenced public health officials to spend money unnecessarily on stockpiles of H1N1 vaccines.

Chaib said the WHO took its work of providing independent advice to its 193 member states seriously, and guarded against the influence of vested interests.

REVIEWING DEMAND

Several countries are cutting back orders for H1N1 vaccines as it becomes clear that the outbreak, declared a global pandemic by the WHO in June, is not as severe as at first feared.

Governments will have an opportunity to question the WHO about H1N1 at a meeting of its 34-member board next week.

The WHO’s top flu expert, Keiji Fukuda, will brief the board on January 18 about the latest developments in the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years.

Read more…

Cleveland.com

Few people at risk for H1N1 get vaccinated

By Harlan Spector, The Plain Dealer

January 10, 2010, 9:52PM

Lines are short for an H1N1 flu clinic at Cleveland City Hall Friday. Turnout at public health clinics has been lower than expected.

Fewer than two in 10 pregnant women in Ohio have been vaccinated against H1N1 flu, even though they are among those most at risk for flu-related health problems.

Overall, according to state vaccination data, only one in five Ohioans considered the highest risk — including health-care workers and children with medical problems — were vaccinated through the end of 2009, despite an ambitious public health campaign carried out since the fall.

The Ohio Department of Health data, obtained through a public records request, also shows that only 39 percent of Cuyahoga County’s 44,000 health-care and emergency medical service workers have protected themselves against the H1N1 virus. Health care workers were given the first doses to protect them and the patients they come in contact with.Ohio Department of Health officials say vaccination rates are better than they appear because providers are behind in their reporting. But results thus far are not encouraging.

About 4 million doses have been distributed in Ohio, and the data shows less than 1 million had been administered through Dec. 30.

Read more…

FoxNews.com 

Swine flu infections continue to drop and only one state — Alabama — was reporting widespread cases last week.

Four states had widespread cases the previous week. The number has been dropping since late October, when nearly all states had widespread flu reports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reported Friday that there are no signs of seasonal flu right now, only the swine variety. But CDC officials noted there is still more flu around than normally seen at this time of year, and illnesses could increase as kids return to school after the holiday break.

The CDC Report: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm