Swine Flu: Checking on how many stories have been put up here on Dkos in the last year, I got a count of 189.
They are still being put up here.
3 weeks ago, something got past my radar, or it would have been posted here already. But I did find it today.
Der Spiegel is the most important mass media magazine in Germany, and one of the top 3 or 4 in Europe. Here is what came from them on March 12th:
Reconstruction of a Mass Hysteria - The Swine Flu Panic of 2009
It had a really nice graphic, too:
(If the image does not show up, here is what it shows: Flu Pandemic Scenario: 2 million deaths vs Actual Deaths up to March 2010: 16,500.)
Excerpt #1:
...Entire careers and institutions, and a lot of money, depend on the outcomes of their work. "Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur," says flu expert Tom Jefferson, from an international health nonprofit called the Cochrane Collaboration. "And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding."
Now turned up, the machinery was set into motion. Researchers got to work examining the molecular structure of the virus. The pharmaceutical industry started to develop vaccines. Government agencies laid out disaster plans. There was only one thing that everyone was ignoring: The new pathogen was, in fact, relatively harmless.
How did all this happen?
Excerpt #2:
At first, there was talk of several dozen dead in Mexico, but soon the authorities adjusted that number downward to seven. The epidemic experts were moving in a scientific gray area, filled with contradictory information and many unanswered questions. How fast does the virus spread? Which people are at the greatest risk? Does the normal influenza vaccine provide protection? Most of all: Just how dangerous is the new virus?
Excerpt #3:
April 29, 2009: The WHO raises its warning to phase 5, the last stage before a pandemic. Influenza researchers are elated. "A pandemic -- for virologists like us, it's like a solar eclipse in one's own country for astronomers," says Markus Eickmann, director of the BSL-4 high-security laboratory in the central German city of Marburg .
April 30, 2009 : Egypt begins killing all domestic pigs in the country. French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot begs President Hosni Mubarak to stop the mass slaughter, but her appeals are unsuccessful.
...August 2009: The Australian flu season has ended. In the absence of a vaccine, only 190 people have died by the end of the season -- a significantly smaller number than in a normal flu season.
Exerpt #4:
An influenza epidemic, according to Germany's national pandemic plan -- updated in 2007 -- is "a long-lasting, international situation involving substantial loss...and causing such lasting damage as to jeopardize or destroy the livelihood of large numbers of people."
The situation on June 11, 2009 did not correspond with these descriptions. Critics were already asking derisively whether the WHO had any plans to declare the latest outbreak of the common cold a pandemic. "Sometimes some of us think that WHO stands for World Hysteria Organization," says Richard Schabas, the former chief medical officer for Canada's Ontario Province.
Excerpt #5:
The infectious disease experts at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and PEI were also applying pressure to the state health ministers. "We felt that we were getting miserable advice at the time," says Social Democrat Hermann Schulte-Sasse, a member of the Bremen State Council. "The institutes were no help to us in terms of preventing scaremongering."
Instead, the RKI and PEI were coming up with new alarming numbers. In June, the experts warned that Germany could expect up to 80,000 deaths, and "€15 billion to €45 billion in lost production."
Excerpt #6:
Oct. 9, 2009: Wolf-Dieter Ludwig, an oncologist and chairman of the Drug Commission of the German Medical Association , says: "The health authorities have fallen for a campaign by the pharmaceutical companies, which were plainly using a supposed threat to make money."
Oct. 21, 2009: A BILD newspaper headline, printed in toxic yellow, warns: "Swine Flu Professor Fears 35,000 Dead in Germany !" The professor's name is Adolf Windorfer, and when pressed, he admits that he has received payments from the industry, including GSK and Novartis. Next to the BILD headline is an ad for the German Association of Pharmaceutical Companies.
Nov. 28, 2009 : The swine flu begins to subside in Germany . Hardly anyone wants to be vaccinated.
Dec. 8, 2009 : English road crews run out of grit to treat the country's icy roads. Paul Flynn, a Labour MP in the British Parliament, proposes using the government's unused Tamiflu pills instead. A study by the Cochrane Collaboration has shown that the flu medication was relatively ineffective. [emphasis added]
Jan. 7, 2010: RKI President Hacker, warning of a new wave of the flu, says: "The vaccine is still needed because the virus is still here."
Jan. 26, 2010: Wolfgang Wodarg, a member of the German parliament, tells the European Council in Strasbourg that "millions of people worldwide were vaccinated for no good reason." According to Wodarg, the WHO's classification of the swine flu as a pandemic have earned the pharmaceutical companies $18 billion in additional revenues. Annual sales of Tamiflu alone have jumped 435 percent, to €2.2 billion.
Excerpt #7:
Perhaps they should have followed the example of Ewa Kopacz, the Polish health minister. The 53-year-old physician, a member of the free-market Civic Platform, has a reputation for courting controversy.
When she stepped up to the podium in the Polish parliament, the Sejm, during its vaccine debate, she wore a bright-red dress -- her combat gear. "As a doctor, my first obligation is to harm no one," she said. For this reason, she added, Poland was not going to follow in the rest of Europe's footsteps. "We will not purchase any vaccine against the swine flu," Kopacz told the Sejm.
Politicians grumbled, but the health minister stood her ground. "Is it my duty to sign agreements that are in the interest of Poles, or in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies?" she asked.
Today, Europe can admire her steadfastness. About 170 people died of the swine flu in Poland, a much lower number than the annual death toll attributable to the seasonal flu.
The authorities all over Europe are asking if they've been taken by Big Pharma:
What was this pandemic? Was it all just "good practice for an emergency," as WHO advisor and industry lobbyist Osterhaus puts it? Did the authorities do everything right, as Australian epidemiologist John Mackenzie insists?
Certainly not. No one at the WHO, RKI or PEI should feel proud of themselves. These organizations have gambled away precious confidence. When the next pandemic arrives, who will believe their assessments?
The Boy Who Cried Wolf had nothing on pharmaceutical companies and their scare machine.
But what WILL happen next time? And the time after that?
Wild scaremongering alarmism isn't doing anybody any good in the long term. Warnings should be used judiciously.
189 stories here in one year is over 1 every 2 days.
And it is still going on here...
The swine flu was a pandemic in name only, and MANY insiders did not want to declare it a pandemic at all. Big Pharma pushed them into it.
Who is pushing it here? Does Big Pharma have a mole here? A Judith Miller?
Look at that graphic and look at what was told everybody and what really happened. People in Europe are PISSED. And I don't mean drunk.