What experience
and history teach is this that people and governments never
have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced
from it. ~ G.W.F. Hegel
I have been
following the evolving pandemic of H1N1 influenza beginning
with the original discovery of the infection in Mexico in March
of this year. In the course of this study I have tried to utilize
as my sources high-quality, peer-reviewed journals, data from the
CDC and accepted textbooks of virology.
As with all
such studies one has to integrate and correlate previous experiences
with epidemics and pandemics. As you will see, a great deal of my
material comes from official sources, such as the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National
Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the New England
Journal of Medicine. Thus my distracters cannot claim that I
am using material that is not within the mainstream.
Pregnant
Women NOT at Special Risk from Swine Flu
In the beginning,
even before it was declared a level 6 pandemic by the World Health
Organization (WHO), a group of scientists were sounding
the alarm that this might indeed be the terrifying, deadly pandemic
they had been expecting for over half a century.
Naturally,
the vaccine manufacturers were doing all they could to fuel this
fear and they were quietly making deals with WHO to be among the
companies selected to manufacture the pandemic vaccine
for the world. Being anointed by WHO would guarantee tens of billions
in profits.
As the infection
began to spread into the United States and then the rest of the
world, its peculiar nature became obvious. Those born before 1950
seem to have a high degree of resistance to the infection and the
disease seems slightly more pathogenic (disease causing) among those
aged 25 to 49. Early on the official sources declared that pregnant
women were at a special risk as compared to the seasonal flu. As
we shall see later, this was a grand lie.
Initial
Studies Show H1N1 NOT Dangerous or Highly Contagious
Once the pandemic
had been declared, virologists tested the potency of this virus
using a conventional method, that is, infecting ferrets with the
virus. What they found was that the H1N1 virus was no more pathogenic
than the ordinary seasonal flu, even though it did penetrate slightly
deeper into the lungs. It in no way matched the pathogenecity of
the 19171918 H1N1 virus. It also did not infect other tissues,
and especially important, it did not infect the brain.
Next, they
wanted to test the ability of the virus to spread among the population.
The results of their tests were conflicting, but the best evidence
indicated that the virus did not spread to others very well. In
fact, an unpublished study by the CDC found that when one member
of a family contracted the H1N1 virus, other members of the family
were infected only 10% of the time a very low communicability.
This was later
confirmed in a study of the experience of New York State, in which
only 6.9% of the population contracted the virus, far below the
50% predicted by the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science
and Technology. It is instructive to note that during the 191718
Swine flu epidemic the world infection rate was only 20%.
They also
predicted that 1.8 million people would need hospitalization and
300,000 would end up in the intensive care units (ICU). Further,
they predicted that hospitals would be overwhelmed and that ICU
units would not have enough beds to care for the sick and dying.
Incredibly, they predicted that 90,000 people would die.
Much Fear
Mongering
Not satisfied,
they up the ante on fear mongering by peddling the idea that pregnant
women were especially in danger as were small children. We were
told daily that young, healthy people were dying, not just those
with underlying medical conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes,
cancer and other immune suppressive diseases. The Minister of Fear
(the CDC) was working overtime peddling doom and gloom, knowing
that frightened people do not make rational decisions nothing
sells vaccines like panic.
These same
dire predictions were extended to Australia and New Zealand, which
began to show an increase in their reported cases of H1N1 and associated
hospitalizations as they entered their fall and winter. Recently,
two major articles were released in the New England Journal of
Medicine, which analyzed the American hospitalization experience
and the Australian/New Zealand ICU experience. I will analyze these
very interesting studies.
There is a
dramatic disconnect between what science is discovering about this
flu virus and what is being broadcast over the media outlets. As
you will see, this is a very mild flu virus infection for 99.9%
of the population.
Australian
and New Zealand Experience Prove U.S. is Wrong
As I stated,
the countries in the southern hemisphere have already gone through
their fall and winter, the seasons of peak flu infections. Epidemiologists
and virologists have been surprised at how mild this flu pandemic
has been in the Southern Hemisphere, with relatively few deaths
and few hospitalizations in most areas.
The study
reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on October
8, 2009, called the AZIC study, analyzed all ICU admissions in New
Zealand and Australia, looking at a number of factors. Here is what
they found.