Revisiting the Swine Flu Lies and Hysteria
by Karen De Coster
by Karen De Coster
Recently by Karen De Coster: A Life in the Right
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Along with the U.S. government's numerous military entanglements, there are a series of “smaller” wars that the state carries out against the people who reside within its borders. These “wars” all bear the crisis logo, and they are always targeted at protecting you from something — real, exaggerated, or contrived — that requires massive government intervention and the curtailment of liberties in order to win the war.
The war on the swine flu has been an ongoing affair for the government-media partnership that turned this issue into the most overrated story of 2009. Government officials, up to and including the president, have placed a disproportionate amount of emphasis on a barely notable strain of flu and have used it as justification for embarking on a health jihad that has come to dominate American society. Thanks to this latest offensive, America is chock-full of hallway hand sanitizers in corporate and public buildings; mini-hand sanitizers being passed around like a tin of mints; and posters stuck everywhere telling you how to sneeze, cough, breathe, and properly wash your hands. The Henson Company even produced a collectivist and creepy propaganda piece for children, urging them to get a flu shot for the good of the community.
It is true that a gaggle of faithful followers lined up to offer their bodies — and the bodies of their children — as guinea pigs for the H1N1 vaccine that had never been fully tested. They lined up at sites where the vaccine first became available. As time went on, however, public opinion was swayed by an abundance of evidence that the issue was being oversold in order to build a watershed of crisis and fear. Americans began to refuse the vaccinations, and in fact, many people started speaking out against them as they questioned the vaccine's necessity and safety.
The swine flu frenzy that was commenced and amplified by the U.S. government and its hordes of international lackeys has been a splendid example of misusing propaganda to build hysteria to such an excessive degree that it not only becomes ineffective, but it becomes counterproductive. The mingling of tempered reality with unrestrained fantasy to a degree where the assertions become almost comical leads those who are being propagandized to view the embellishments as serving a divergent and possibly sinister cause.
For instance, in August of 2009, the CDC released a report that stated the swine flu pandemic could cause up to 90,000 deaths. This report would help to serve as justification for the government's massive fear-mongering campaign, including early indications that there would be mandatory vaccinations. In late October, the CDC reported about 1,000 deaths from the swine flu, and two weeks later the CDC reported 4,000 deaths. How is that possible? Did 3,000 people die between late October and early November? The CDC spun the story this way: earlier numbers being used were giving the government “an incomplete story of the pandemic.” The CDC's original count included only laboratory confirmed cases, while its new numbers included estimates from epidemiologists. This way, the numbers could be gamed and a story of far greater severity could be peddled to the public. This all came about at a time when the swine flu numbers were already taking a nosedive and not living up to the government's bullish pandemic predictions.
Perhaps the most comical scaremongering ruse in the whole swine flu circus was the Department of Homeland Security's contingency plans to ration Internet bandwidth and block websites to avoid a possible overrun of Internet provider capacity should too many Americans come down with the swine flu and stay home to surf the Internet all day.
As the flu tizzy has wound down and started to disappear from the media headlines, I have been waiting patiently for a perspective to appear in mainstream print that refuses to let go of the hysteria, and instead attempts to amplify it. The Wall Street "Swine Flu" Journal doesn't disappoint:
Global health officials' response to the swine-flu pandemic reflects major improvements in flu-fighting capabilities in recent years, but limited vaccine supplies, crowded emergency rooms, and other challenges show they still aren't fully equipped to combat a deadlier scourge, the World Health Organization's chief said.
While a second wave of infections caused by the H1N1 virus has ebbed in North America and Western Europe, transmission of flu remains intense in Central and Eastern Europe and parts of southern Asia, and health authorities must monitor its spread for another year or more, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said in an interview this week.
"It is premature to say the pandemic has peaked world-wide," she said. "The situation needs to be watched and monitored at least another six to 12 months." The virus could still mutate to become more severe, she warned.
State bureaucrats 'round the world, and especially in the U.S., can't stand it. They are absolutely disappointed that their perfidious pandemic was a bust, a flop, and a non-pandemic. Of course, there are no limited vaccine supplies or overwhelmed emergency rooms — that was a liar's cacophony for the purpose of using the swine flu epidemic as a control mechanism.
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| At the Tennessee farm, July 2009. | |
January 7, 2010
Karen DeCoster [send her mail] is a libertarian accounting/finance professional and writer. She rides a Harley, shoots lots of guns, and buys Boston Legal DVDs. She likes to put in long miles on her hybrid bicycle, lift heavy weights, use the crock-pot, overindulge on Gouda cheese, do primal workouts, play Frisbee, get lost in the woods, and hang out at Bass Pro Shops. She won't trade in her clunker for cash and it is highly unlikely that she will become a Czar in the Obama administration. She openly advocates resistance to the current regime in power. This is her LewRockwell.com archive and her Mises.org archive. Check out her website.
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