Courtesy of the World Health Organization
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Further to Jay’s post below on how the supposed swine flu “pandemic” is sounding a lot like the ad for Old Glory Robot Insurance:
Michael Fumento, who has made a career out of calling BS on the political abuse of medicine, reports on just how bogus the swine flu panic is – and more importantly, the agenda behind it.
The World Health Organization’s old definition of “pandemic” required an outbreak not only to consist of multiple epidemics around the world, but also to pose an unusually severe threat to life and health before it could be called a pandemic. This was important because plain old ordinary flu causes multiple simultaneous epidemics around the world all the time, but it’s no cause for alarm because the plain old ordinary flu is a routine problem.
But just before swine flu was declared a pandemic, the WHO quietly rewrote the definition of “pandemic” to remove the necessity of an unusually serious threat.
Why’d they have to do that? Because the swine flu is actually less deadly – by orders of magnitude – than the regular flu:
Medically, the pandemic moniker is unjustifiable. When the sacrosanct World Health Organization (WHO) made its official declaration in June, we were 11 weeks into the outbreak, and swine flu had only killed 144 people worldwide — the same number who die of seasonal flu worldwide every few hours. The mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide. And even after six months, swine flu has killed about as many people as the seasonal flu does every six days…
In Australia and New Zealand, flu season has ended, and almost all cases have been swine flu. Yet even without a vaccine, these countries are reporting fewer flu deaths than normal. (In New Zealand, that’s just 18 confirmed deaths compared with 400 normally.) Swine flu is causing negative deaths! [ea]
Update: When I originally posted this I forgot to include this wonderful tidbit. One of the very classy methods being used in the media to hype the swine flu is to report the total number of cases of all types of flu, including even undiagnosed cases with “flu-like symptoms.” Then the total figures for flu deaths and flu cases are falsely reported as swine flu figures.
Why would the WHO want to gin up a baseless panic about swine flu? Partly because they had already over-hyped avian flu and wanted to use a new panic over swine flu to retroactively justify the old panic over avian flu. “The world can now reap the benefits of investments over the last five years in pandemic preparedness,” boasts WHO’s director-general.
And partly it’s for the same reason the Old Glory Insurance Company wants you to believe in robot attacks – money. Apparently WHO makes a living off phony disease scares:
Yet this [CYA for the avian flu scare] doesn’t explain why the agency hyped avian flu in the first place, nor why it exaggerated HIV infections by more than 10 times, or why it spread hysteria over Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). That disease ultimately killed a day’s worth of seasonal flu victims before vanishing.
But the SARS scare was enough, leading to a broad expansion of WHO powers, including a degree of direct authority over national health agencies. It’s now using that to leverage more authority and a bigger budget. No shocker there.
But at least the Old Glory Insurance Company only wanted to take your money. They didn’t want to take your freedom as well. Not so much can be said for the WHO:
What may be surprising is that it wants to use that power to help bring about a global economic and social revolution–and that Director-General Chan was so blunt about it in a speech in Copenhagen last month.
She said “ministers of health” should take advantage of the “devastating impact” swine flu will have on poorer nations to tell “heads of state and ministers of finance, tourism and trade” that:
- The belief that “living conditions and health status of the poor would somehow automatically improve as countries modernized, liberalized their trade and improved their economies” is false. Wealth doesn’t equal health.
- “Changes in the functioning of the global economy” are needed to “distribute wealth on the basis of” values “like community, solidarity, equity and social justice.”
- “The international policies and systems that govern financial markets, economies, commerce, trade and foreign affairs have not operated with fairness as an explicit policy objective.”
In related news, the WHO has announced a new panel of doctors to wield those “special emergency powers” we need to sweep away “bureaucratic obstacles” and combat swine flu. Here they are:
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Even if the media is over-hyping this flu, it is only a matter of luck and time until we do have a massively lethal flu pandemic. It is important that we be prepared, as I suggested in a previous post (https://jaypgreene.com/2009/08/11/are-schools-prepared-for-the-flu/ ).
So, if this year’s experience helps prepare us for when a real disaster strikes, that can be good. But if it makes authorities seem like the boy who cried wolf, that’s bad.
Scary reading: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/15/plague_a_new_thriller_of_the_coming_pandemic?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full
When you say, “if this year’s experience helps prepare us for when a real disaster strikes,” you mean, if a bunch of hysteria about a nonexistant problem whipped up in the service of a political agenda leads to better preparedness? Are you offering bets on whether that’ll happen?
Well, it wasn’t entirely known whether H1N1 would be massively lethal or not. And frankly, it still might be if it mutates.
People should get the vaccine and we need to address the barriers to faster production and distribution of these vaccines. People should practice sensible precautions, like being sure to wash their hands and staying home when sick.
It doesn’t require over-hyping how lethal H1N1 currently is or socialism to do these things, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t need to work on these issues for when a real pandemic strikes.
On the contrary, at the time the WHO and Obama made these decisions, it was in fact very well known that H1N1 is a less serious threat than the ordinary flu.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that when the president invokes “emergency powers” in order to eliminate “bureaucratic obstacles” in the name of dealing with a problem that’s less severe than ordinary seasonal flu, the results of that are going to be bad pretty much regardless.
Oh, and by far the major barrier to production and distribution of vaccines is the trial lawyers. Are you taking bets on whether Obama will do something about them?
True dat, G-man.
Wow, pretty conspiratorial stuff Greg. A lot of unsubstantiated motives being assigned. I did a little editing on your last comment for fun.
On the contrary, at the time the CIA and Bush made these decisions, it was in fact very well known that Iraq was a less serious threat than Iran.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that when the president invokes “war powers” in order to eliminate “WMDs” in the name of dealing with a problem that’s less severe than ordinary Middle Eastern countries, the results of that are going to be bad pretty much regardless.
Oh, and by far the major benefactors of production and distribution of oil are Halliburton and the Saudi Family. Are you taking bets on whether Bush will do something about them?
Well, the only thing you get wrong is that my assertions are substantiated rather than unsubstantiated. I know it’s only two letters’ difference so it can be a pain in the neck to keep track of, but it really is kind of an important distinction to make. 🙂
When the WHO declared the swine flu a pandemic and Obama invoked emergency powers, we had more than enough data on swine flu to establish that it causes less sickness and death than regular seasonal flu. I cited a few of the data from Fumento’s post above; if you go read his post, he has plenty more where that came from. By contrast, the issue of whether Iraq is a less serious threat than Iran is a difficult judgment call that can’t be settled merely by measuring some metric of “Middle East threatness”. Reasonable people could disagree in 2003 about which country was the bigger threat. Reasonable people could not disagree last week about which causes more deaths, swine flu or regular seasonal flu. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
As to motives, the head of the WHO is directly, explicitly saying that she wants to use the swine flu panic to promote radical changes in economic policy. Those are quotes from her in the post above. I didn’t make them up. So where am I assigning “unsubstantiated motives”?
But where I really can’t figure you out is where you think it somehow discredits my position to show that if it is applied consistently, my position implies presidents shouldn’t invoke war powers and circumvent ordinary safeguards on the use of executive power in order to deal with routine threats. I’m not sure why you think this discredits my position. I actually think it’s true that presidents shouldn’t invoke war powers to deal with ordinary situations, and that the results of their doing so “are going to be bad pretty much regardless.” Could you clarify?
Sorry to be so late getting back to you. To clarify: I didn’t intend to discredit your position, though I’ll admit to knowing it would come across that way. I was just having fun. I actually agree with you more than I disagree with you. I don’t want the WHO or the president grabbing up more power to promote an agenda under false pretenses.
Now, it is true we disagree on the facts of 2003. And yes, I do think if you applied the same objective scrutiny to the facts of 2003 as you do to the facts of 2009 you would have to conclude that the situations are quite similar, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that epiphany! Both sides did a pretty good job of creating a version of the facts they could use to support the position they took. I don’t have the time or energy to refute all of that, at least not in this forum.
For the record, I didn’t express any opinion about which country (Iraq or Iran) was a bigger threat in 2003. I don’t think I’ve ever even formed an opinion about which country was a bigger threat in 2003. I only said that the question of which country was a bigger threat in 2003 was – not in light of this or that particular fact but by its very nature as a question requiring the exercise of prudential judgment – one on which reasonable people could disagree. Whereas the question of which type of flu killed more people this year is strictly empirical and can thus be settled with facts.
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