Article reference: http://www.laleva.org/eng/2010/04/h1n1_pandemic_alert_-_fact_or_fiction_or_scare_tactic.html

H1N1 PANDEMIC ALERT - FACT or FICTION or Scare Tactic

H1N1 PANDEMIC ALERT - FACT or FICTION or Scare Tactic
Beldeu Singh

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Britain's National Health Service, once you have H1N1 flu, you're immune from future outbreaks of the same virus. The ramifications of this finding are important because:-

1. If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu.

2. In fact, you probably didn't have flu at all. That's according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation. (Swine Flu Cases Overestimated? CBS News Exclusive: Study of State Results Finds H1N1 Not As Prevalent As Feared).

Is the CDC really serious about this pandemic? The answer may be found in their funny reason on why the CDC advised states to stop testing for H1N1. In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there's an epidemic? (cbsnews.com report on H1N1). If it is a deadly epidemic, why stop the testing and in view of the ramifications as well?

CBS News learned that the decision to stop counting H1N1 flu cases was made so hastily that states weren't given the opportunity to provide input. CDC was not providing CBS with the material it wanted and CBS filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). More than two months later, the request had not been fulfilled. CBS also asked CDC for state-by-state test results prior to halting of testing and tracking, but CDC was again, initially, unresponsive. (cbsnews.com report on H1N1).

"While cbs waited for CDC to provide the data, which it eventually did, cbs asked all 50 states for their statistics on state lab-confirmed H1N1 prior to the halt of individual testing and counting in July". The results reveal a pattern that surprised a number of health care professionals. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico.



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(CBS)


If testing for H1N1 is not carried out, the causative agent of the illness remains unknown. Health experts say it's assumed the patients had some sort of cold or upper respiratory infection that is just not influenza as most cases were diagnosed solely on symptoms and risk factors that made the H1N1 flu epidemic look worse than it really is. Whatever happened to science-based evidence for managing epidemics? Perhaps, that was the real objective - to make the H1N1 flu look like worse than it really is - to sell more vaccines.

Interestingly, the states in the US were already doing better than what the CDA wanted and according to Dr. Bela Matyas, California's Acting Chief of Emergency Preparedness and Response they were "gathering data better to answer how severe is the illness. With CDC's fallback position, there are so many uncertainties with who's being counted, it's hard to know how much we're seeing is due to H1N1 flu rather than a mix of influenza diseases generally." So, the states were in a position to determine the statistics. (cbsnews.com report on H1N1).

Uncertainties help to sell vaccines, too, so a Harvard MBA will tell you that creating uncertainties can boost the business. The CDC policy to stop counting the cases will then help balloon the uncertainties. How does this work?

Because of the uncertainties, the CDC advises even those who were told they had H1N1 to get vaccinated unless they had lab confirmation. "Persons who are uncertain about how they were diagnosed should get the 2009 vaccine."

That's unwelcome news for many whose two children were diagnosed with "probable" H1N1 flu over the summer. Many parents hoped that would mean they wouldn't need the hastily developed H1N1 flu vaccine. However, since their cases were never confirmed with lab tests, the CDC advises they get the vaccine". Now you see the plot. Was the US President Barrack misled into declaring a national emergency for the swine flu, noting a "rapid increase in illness."? A national emergency also helps the business in a huge way.

A recent CNN article covering this critical topic goes on to quote CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden, "since the H1N1 flu pandemic began in April, millions of people in the United States have been infected, at least 20,000 have been hospitalized and more than 1,000 have died, "yet excellent investigative reporting by CBS News shows that the number of swine flu cases is being significantly exaggerated.

This alone could lead to a great exaggeration of reported swine flu cases, particularly as the CDC website states that every year in the U.S. on average 5 to 20% of the population gets the seasonal flu. This means between 15 and 60 million people come down with some version of the flu every year. Complications from the seasonal flu are claimed to kill about 36,000 people annually (100 per day on average) and more than 200,000 are hospitalized. Why would the CDC decide to stop testing and counting swine flu cases? If the swine flu is as dangerous and deadly as alleged, we would expect more testing and not a halt. The CDC website gives several puzzling reasons, including "there are too many cases of flu to test and confirm" yet with millions of cases of cancer and heart disease every year, states have never been told to stop testing for these. (Carolyn Spector Gillis; April 9, 2010 at 3:33am, Facebook).

By October/November last year, the CDC reported that since its first appearance, nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed by H1N1 swine flu. By contrast it was pointed out that more than four times as many people are killed each year by common NSAID painkillers like aspirin? (manewsed). (ONLY SWINE FLU DEATHS LEAD TO HYSTERIA. Laleva.Org).

"Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone" (Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Gastropathy", The American Journal of Medicine, July 27, 1998, p. 31S). "So for every person the CDC claims was killed by H1N1 swine flu this year, common painkillers like aspirin have killed four! Yet you don't see the CDC, FDA, WHO or mainstream media running around screaming about the extreme dangers of aspirin, do you?


Interestingly, WHO responded and in a news article, several months later, stated that H1N1 numbered at 16,000! But that is cumulative compared to the more than 16,000 deaths annuallyfrom aspirin. Now, a report appears that confirms that the "official death toll worldwide from H1N1 is 14,000" (Dr. Henry Miller, Physician & Molecular biologist, NST, Friday, April, 2010). How can anyone rely or value the WHO statistics and report on figures? The news media, on the other hand, like the cbs report is authentic and more scientific while to many minds WHO reports appear tailored.

Many health authorities have stated that the H1N1 has mild symptoms excepting for those in the high risk group especially children and the older people with other complications that are associated with oxidative stress and appearance of secondary radicals and the peroxynitrite radical and depressed immune systems. This shows that how we test for the high risk group must shift towards a biochemical basis rather than base it on symptoms alone. While the official death toll from H1N1 is 14,000, the seasonal flu kills 36,000 Americans on the average, so about 2.57 times more people die from seasonal flu, but there is no PANDEMIC ALERT by WHO on seasonal flu.

Keiji Fukuda, special adviser to WHO's director-general for pandemic flu has gone on record to state that the organization did not overplay the dangers but "prepared for the worst and hoped for the best" but Dr. Henry Miller (Physician & Molecular biologist, NST, Friday, April, 2010) has correctly pointed out that pandemic alerts must not be a prediction but a real snapshot of the epidemic in process. I believe the law and regulation is not to theorize and create alarm or theorize to create alarm and is not drafted on any pinning of "hope for the best" in how the prediction turns out especially when it is already clear that more people die from aspirin and the seasonal flu than H1N1 but evidence-based projections are acceptable only when the CDC does not stop the individual testing to ascertain what the disease is, in order to prevent uncertainties. These types of organizations are established and funded and allowed to hire experts precisely to take out the uncertainty element in epidemics and how such diseases spread. They are not there to interfere with the fundamental approaches that serve or better serve to create uncertainties.

Currently, the WHO pandemic warning system is either abused or require some legal adjustments and training so that a better epidemic management system is put in place that works along scientific principles and otherwise stays within the parameters of science. The present system appears to be tuned to "cry wolf" as Jack Fisher (Professor of Surgery, University of California, San Diego school of Medicine) puts it but, to many, it may not appear to be alarmist or predictive in nature but one that helps create a scare that better promotes the sale of vaccines.