Comparing Swine flu to Bird Flu
May 1, 2009
Remember Bird Flu hype in 2006, caused by the H5N1 virus that was “supposed” to be the next pandemic? The claim was the death rate was 50%. Only the deaths of very ill persons who died in hospitals and had a positive test for H5N1 were reported.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals with H5N1influenza were not sick enough to require medical care, as confirmed by Dick Thompson, spokesperson for the WHO. In an interview with CIDRAP News in March 2005, Thompson stated,
“The obvious assumption is that others are infected and either not getting sick, or not getting sick enough to seek treatment at a hospital. Factoring those patients into the death rate [makes it] impossible to determine, because the denominator is unknown.”
Dr. John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University, concurred with Thompson’s observation. Paulos asserted that the reported death rate, based only on cases of severely ill persons, is an “almost textbook case” of sample bias. He explained that asymptomatic people, and those who have recovered uneventfully, aren’t part of the mortality rate calculations. As a consequence, the numbers are skewed substantially upward.
“The clinical spectrum of S-OIV (swine flu) illness is not yet well characterized in Mexico. However, evidence suggests that S-OIV transmission is widespread and that less severe (uncomplicated) illness is common. Patients with confirmed disease have been identified in several states, and suspected cases have been identified in all states, which suggests that S-OIV transmission is widespread. To date, case- finding in Mexico has focused on patients seeking care in hospitals, and the selection of cases for laboratory testing has focused on patients with more severe disease. Therefore, a large number of undetected cases of illness might exist in persons seeking care in primary-care settings or not seeking care at all.”
It seems to me that every time the pharmaceutical companies want some money, they encourage the government to hype some crisis, and money pours into their coffers. President Obama asked for the
release of an additional $1.5billion. This adds to the $7bn the drug companies got in 2005 through BioShield II and the $2bn the government spent to purchase stockpiles of Tamiflu.
The reported fatality rate of bird flu was close to 50 percent— like the 2001 reports of smallpox having a 30 percent fatality rate. It is a mathematical absurdity promoted for the sole purpose of frightening the public into accepting massive government regulations and submitting to vaccination. Be Aware: The Swine Flu hype is essentially the same.