Courtenay Bartholomew
Trinidad and Tobago Express
06/16/10

Close to over two centuries ago, the poet Lord Byron wrote: ’Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe/ Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast/ Is that portentous phrase ’I told you so.’’ Look, to misquote the great bards is anathema to me and so, I had to check to make sure that I quoted him correctly as I do not always remember their exact sayings. That is for people like Sir Ellis Clarke and his elephantoid memory. However, I must crave Byron’s indulgence (just as most people have forgiven his many dalliances) for although I am fast becoming proud of my humility, I cannot resist the temptation to say: ’I told you so.’

Dr. John Briffa
The Epoch Times
06/12/2010

Last year the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the planet was in the throes of an influenza pandemic. Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the WHO, delivered the notice.

Her announcement triggered large-scale panic buying of flu vaccines and anti-viral drugs such as oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza). According to the investment bank J. P. Morgan, the pharmaceutical companies did very nicely out of this health scare, profiting to the tune of $7 billion from the sale of vaccines alone.

In reality, the “pandemic” turned out to be nothing of the sort. Estimates of cases and fatalities turned out to be wildly overblown. Apparently, many countries now have warehouses full of vaccines and drugs that they’re trying to offload, either back to the drug companies they bought them from or to other countries.

Read the rest of the article.

Deborah Dupre
Human Rights Examiner
06/04/2010

Evidence of the global criminal cabal conducting the H1N1 swine flu vaccine operation was revealed this week. The evidence shows that the World Health Organization (WHO) knew Big Pharma paid swine flu scientists for data used to declare a pandemic.

Millions of people took the swine flu vaccine that drug companies had paid scientists to report were needed and safe, profiting Big Pharma billions of dollars according to the June 3, 2010 investigative report by British Medical Journal and Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the not-for-profit reporting unit.

“The issue of transparency has risen to the forefront of public health debate after dramatic predictions last year about a swine flu pandemic did not come true,” reports the Guardian UK.

Read the rest of the article.

Rema Nagarajan
The Times of India
06/05/2010

In a strong indictment of the World Health Organization, a report prepared for the Council of Europe has said WHO wasted large sums of public money by raising unjustified fears of ‘‘a pandemic that never really was’’ and expressed concern over the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the decisions taken by it regarding the H1N1 virus outbreak.

The report of the social, health and family affairs committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), made public on Friday in Paris, identified what it called ‘‘grave shortcomings’’ in transparency of decision-making at WHO.

It is estimated that around $18 billion was spent on the H1N1 pandemic across the world.

Read the rest of the article.

Paul Rodgers and Smitha Mundasad
The Independent
05/16/2010

The spectre of plague stalked the world last year with its constant companion, fear. Schools and stadiums were closed in Mexico, tourists from Egypt to Singapore were quarantined, and the surgical mask became a universal fashion accessory across Asia. Yet predictions that the global death toll from swine flu could reach 7.5 million were well off the mark. At most, the virus killed 14,000 people, and some of those had pre-existing conditions or had been infected by other dangerous bugs as well. Against a background death toll from seasonal flu of up to 500,000, the new H1N1 strain was invisible.

Professor Ulrich Keil, a World Health Organisation (WHO) adviser on heart disease, said the decision to declare a pandemic had led to a “gigantic misallocation” of health budgets. “We know the great killers are hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, high body mass index, physical inactivity and low fruit and vegetable intake,” he told the Council of Europe. Yet governments “instead wasted huge amounts of money by investing in pandemic scenarios whose evidence base is weak”.

The suspicion that the response to the outbreak was an unnecessary panic has been spreading since the virus slipped from the front pages. Even the WHO, the UN body that first punched the big red button, may be having doubts. An external committee has been set up to review its reaction and will deliver an interim report this week, though at the moment no bombshells are expected.

Read the rest of the article.