“If you’ve been diagnosed ‘probable’ or ‘presumed’ 2009 H1N1 or swine flu in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. That’s according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation. ”
— CBS News, 10/21/09
Source: WhatToKnow.info
Dear friends,
President Obama has declared a national emergency for the swine flu, noting a “rapid increase in illness.” A recent CNN article covering this critical topic goes on to quote CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden, “since the H1N1 flu pandemic began in April, millions of people in the United States have been infected, at least 20,000 have been hospitalized and more than 1,000 have died.”
Yet excellent investigative reporting by CBS News shows that the actual number of swine flu cases is being significantly exaggerated. The lead paragraph of this CBS article states, “If you’ve been diagnosed ‘probable’ or ‘presumed’ 2009 H1N1 or swine flu in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have the flu at all. That’s according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation.”
The CBS report goes on to point out that the CDC strangely advised states to stop testing and to stop counting the number of swine flu cases last July. The CDC website explains that states are no longer differentiating between the regular flu and the swine flu, reporting instead all influenza and pneumonia-related hospitalizations and deaths in one count.
This alone could lead to a great exaggeration of reported swine flu cases, particularly as the CDC website states that every year in the U.S. on average 5 to 20% of the population gets the seasonal flu. This means between 15 and 60 million people come down with some version of the flu every year. Complications from the seasonal flu are claimed to kill about 36,000 people (100 per day on average), while more than 200,000 are hospitalized annually.
Why on Earth would the CDC decide to stop counting swine flu cases? The CBS website states, “The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there’s an epidemic?”
The CDC website gives several puzzling reasons, including “there are too many cases of flu to test and confirm.” Yet with millions of cases of cancer and heart disease every year, states have never been told to stop testing for these. If the swine flu is as dangerous and deadly as alleged, we would expect more testing and not a halt.
The CBS article further elaborates, “Some public health officials privately disagreed with the decision to stop testing and counting, telling CBS News that continued tracking of this new and possibly changing virus was important because H1N1 has a different epidemiology, affects younger people more than seasonal flu and has been shown to have a higher case fatality rate than other flu virus strains.”
CBS reporters asked CDC to provide materials from states on lab-confirmed swine flu cases before the count stopped in July. CDC not only was initially unwilling to provide the information, they obstructed the investigation (watch CBS News clip on this). CBS then submitted a freedom of information request to HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) for this same information, but again received no response for two months. So the intrepid CBS team requested the information directly from all 50 states.
On receiving these statistics, CBS reporters were astounded to find that for cases labeled probable or presumed swine flu, further testing showed that “the vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico.”
Many states found that only 1 – 2% of “probable” or “presumed” swine flu cases in fact were swine flu. It may be that because of all the hype and fear being spread by the media and government, people’s heightened anxiety and fear of having the dreaded swine flu caused them to go to their doctor for a simple fever, headache, or runny nose, thus leading to a very large number of false assessments.
The numbers of swine flu cases thus appear to have been greatly exaggerated even before July. And as the CDC ordered states to stop counting in July, we have no way to make an accurate count now. Thus the numbers being used by the media and fed to people like President Obama have no reliable value and can be even further inflated, leading to even more fear and false claims of swine flu.
Consider also that with the CDC’s claim of 100 deaths per day due to the regular flu, even if the figure of 1,000 deaths in the past six months due to swine flu were true, it is far less than the death toll of even one month of the seasonal flu.
One claim used to promote fear is that the flu season is just starting. The public will be in great danger when the season soon kicks into full gear. Yet the flu season in the southern hemisphere, which has seasons opposite to the north, is now over, and the swine flu did not wreak havoc as predicted.
A September Reuters News article states, “The U.S. government said an analysis of the epidemics in Australia, Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, and Uruguay showed that while H1N1 dominated the flu seasons there, it was only moderately severe. The pandemic did stress healthcare systems, but not for long.”
Why would the CDC exaggerate the risk of this disease? According to the CDC website, “The federal government has purchased a total of 250 million doses of 2009 H1N1 vaccine.” Remember that the U.S. population is about 300 million. The CDC has spent billions of our tax dollars to purchase these vaccines and obviously wants nearly everyone to get vaccinated. The drug companies have raked in billions of dollars in profits from this vaccine, even if a large portion of the vaccines is never used.
The government has also granted immunity from lawsuits to vaccine producers, so that those injured or killed by the vaccine may have no recourse for settlement. Maybe they learned from their mistakes with the 1976 swine flu scare, in which over 40 million Americans were vaccinated after government and media joined to pump fear out to the nation.
Only one person was confirmed dead from the actual swine flu in 1976, yet hundreds filed death claims and thousands filed claims for paralysis from the swine flu vaccine. The vaccine caused Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an acknowledged risk factor with the current vaccine. Don’t miss the powerful CBS 60 Minutes video clip at this link showing blatant corruption and fear mongering in the 1976 swine flu scare.
Numerous top MDs and health professionals have publicly stated that our health care system and even our politicians have been seriously corrupted by the vast wealth of the pharmaceutical industry. The major media, which receives billions of dollars in advertising money from drug companies, has barely reported on this.
Read what Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, has to say about drug company greed and influence at this link. Here’s just one quote from her powerful writing:
“The pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.”
And here’s a quote from an article by Dr. George Lundberg, the former editor-in-chief of the highly respected Journal of the American Medical Association:
“Efforts to control American medical costs date from at least 1932. With few exceptions, they have failed. The lure of economic incentives to provide unnecessary or unproven care … drives many physicians to make the lucrative choice. Hospitals and especially academic medical centers are also motivated to profit from many expensive procedures. Eliminating … waste could save $750 billion annually with no harm to patient outcomes.”
The powerful pharmaceutical lobby has played a key role in causing U.S. health costs to be 50% higher than that of most other developed nations, yet as this MSNBC article states, “The United States is the only developed nation that does not have a comprehensive national health care plan, leaving about 50 million people without health insurance.”
Now the drug companies are using their power and influence to get politicians and the media behind the lucrative, yet questionable swine flu vaccine. For lots more reliable information on strange manipulations involving the swine flu vaccine, click here. And see the box below for ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself and spread the word about the swine flu deception.
With best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton