Swine Flu & Other Pandemics
Obama Administration Launches Deceptive Swine Flu Propaganda Blitz
October 29, 2009Infowars - President Obama and his top health officials are engaging in a major public relations effort to divert attention away from whether its swine flu vaccine is effective and safe – to whether there is enough of it to go around. And the media, as always, is cooperating fully. This echoes the way media debate was manipulated during the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. Instead of debating whether we should even be fighting those wars, the media debated only whether we were using the correct military strategy.
If people would simply shut off the CDC’s supported propaganda noise being blasted across the airwaves and newspapers and simply do their homework, Americans would wake up and realize the hoax behind the swine flu pandemic.
Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors are issuing harsh criticisms of the Government’s plan to vaccinate (forcibly if necessary) virtually the entire U.S. population with what they claim is a poorly tested vaccine that is not only ineffective against swine flu, but could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps.
The CDC’s public relations campaign has been running “scare” ads that portray swine flu as a full-blown “pandemic” responsible for snuffing out countless lives, and which, unless stopped by universal vaccination, could kill millions of American citizens. But scientists and health officials throughout the world have called the governments claims unjustified and deliberately misleading...
Swine Flu Peaks Out Before Vaccines Even Make It into Widespread Distribution
October 28, 2009Natural News - Swine flu infections have peaked out in the USA, even before drug companies could get their vaccines injected into everyone. According to CDC findings announced recently in Atlanta, one in five U.S. children have already experienced the flu this month, and most of those were likely H1N1 swine flu cases, the CDC says.
This comes from a survey of over 10,000 U.S. households conducted by the CDC.
Meanwhile, flu vaccine shipments are way behind schedule. There have been supply problems from the start, and as of right now, relatively few Americans have yet been injected with the swine flu vaccine. (Many have stood in line for hours trying to be injected, but were told to go home with the vaccine ran out.)
Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were H1N1 swine flu infections. This is a very strong indication that swine flu infections have peaked during October, 2009.
Further supporting that notion, researchers from Purdue University just published a paper in the October 15 issue of Eurosurveillance (a science journal about communicable disease) in which researchers stated that the H1N1 swine flu epidemic would peak during “week 42″ (the end of October). Week 42 just passed. It’s over.
The AJC is also reporting this week that swine flu is “retreating” in Georgia, where hospital visits from the flu are markedly down and fewer illnesses are being reported in schools, too.
Even the WHO is reporting a downward trend in many areas, saying, “In tropical areas of the world, rates of illness are generally declining, with a few exceptions. …In tropical Asia, of the countries that are reporting this week, all report decreases in respiratory disease activity.”
Meanwhile, even as the swine flu infection peaks out, the shortage of swine flu vaccines means few people have yet been vaccinated. The shortage is causing “chaos” in clinics across the country, news reports say, and flu vaccination events have been cancelled due to the non-arrival of expected vaccines.
And what, exactly, is causing this shortage of vaccines? According to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, they’re being caused by “production failures” at the drug manufacturing facilities.
Too little, too late
Is she serious? People are lining up to be injected with chemicals made by companies that are suffering “production failures?” If these companies can’t meet the production targets they already promised, how can we expect them to meet the safety targets they promised?
The bigger point, though, is that by the time vaccines are available for everyone, most people will have already been exposed to the H1N1 virus and therefore won’t even need a vaccine. There’s also evidence that previous exposure to seasonal flu may confer some natural immunity to H1N1, meaning that vaccines may be redundant from the start.
Delivering vaccines to the public after the pandemic peaks and wanes is sort of like putting on your seatbelt after a head-on collision. (This metaphor assumes, just for the moment, that swine flu vaccines actually work. Even though they don’t.)
Through the coming holiday season, we’ll all get to watch the CDC, the FDA and drug companies desperately try to push vaccines onto people, most of whom are already immune to H1N1 because they were exposed during the peak of the pandemic. This will be quite entertaining to observe because you’ll get to watch health authorities in action, attempting to fabricate an emergency when the pandemic threat has already faded. To maximize vaccinations (and therefore Big Pharma revenues), they’ll need to keep pushing the pandemic fears through the winter months while hoping that no one notices the H1N1 pandemic has evaporated.
Predictably, the big push at that point will be based on the following logic: “Even if you were already exposed to H1N1, getting a vaccine shot can’t hurt. Might as well get one!”
The CDC, which once promised 150 million vaccines by mid-October has pushed its prediction to year’s end. Unless some new H1N1 mutation is released into the population by some bioterrorist group, it’s fairly obvious that the swine flu will have fizzled out by the time Christmas rolls around...
First Daughters Not Vaccinated Against H1N1
October 25, 2009Fox News - President Obama’s school age daughters have not been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.
The Centers for Disease Control recommend that children ages 6 months through 18 years of age receive a vaccination against the H1N1 flu virus. At this time only children with chronic medical conditions are receiving the vaccination because their immune system is not strong enough to fight off the strain. The CDC also says a regular seasonal flu shot does not protect against the virus.
Obama Declares Swine Flu a National Emergency
October 24, 2009Reuters - U.S. President Barack Obama has declared 2009 H1N1 swine flu a national emergency, the White House said on Saturday.
The declaration will make it easier for U.S. medical facilities to handle a surge in flu patients by allowing the waiver of some requirements of Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health insurance programs as needed, the White House said in a statement.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that H1N1 swine flu has become widespread in 46 of the 50 U.S. states, a level comparable to the peak of ordinary flu seasons but far earlier and with more waves of infection expected.
Obama signed the statement on Friday night.
The White House statement said the declaration was intended to prepare the country in case of "a rapid increase in illness that may overburden health care resources." It was similar to disaster declarations issued before hurricanes hit coastal areas.
"It's important to note that this is a proactive measure -- not a response to a new development," an administration official said.Seasonal flu normally peaks sometime between late November and early March.
"H1N1 is moving rapidly, as expected. By the time regions or healthcare systems recognize they are becoming overburdened, they need to implement disaster plans quickly," he said.
Swine flu has hit young adults and children the hardest, while seasonal flu normally is more dangerous for people over age 65.
H1N1 has killed more than 1,000 Americans and put more than 20,000 in the hospital in the United States since it emerged earlier this year, the CDC said. But health officials are quick to note that the actual number of cases cannot be measured.
H1N1 swine flu had been declared a public health emergency earlier in the year.
The new declaration clears the way for waivers of federal requirements that, for example, could prevent hospitals from establishing off-site, alternate care facilities that could help them deal with emergency department demands, the White House said.
Healthy Asked to Step Aside for Shots
October 24, 2009AP (Richmond, Virginia) - Virginia officials are reminding healthy adults to step aside and allow children, pregnant women and people with underlying health problems have the first crack at H1N1 influenza vaccinations.
Dr. Karen Remley, the state's health commissioner, said at a briefing Friday that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had allocated fewer than 400,000 doses of vaccine to Virginia so far because of manufacturing delays. No vaccination sites have yet received all of what they'd originally anticipated.
She also said about 3.1 million Virginians fit into high-risk categories, slightly less than half the state's population, so there's already a wide mismatch in vaccine supply and demand.
Dr. Remley said that 240 school-based vaccination clinics have been held statewide since Virginia received its first allocation of vaccine, but production and distribution delays at vaccine manufacturers have forced many health departments to postpone or change schedules for other clinics.
The Virginia Department of Health originally said it expected the state to receive about 1.3 million doses of its anticipated total allocation of 4.7 million doses of vaccine by the end of the month. Dr. Remley said Friday that the total allocation will be decreased by nearly half of the originally planned amount.
Dr. Remley said the health department still hopes the swine-flu vaccine will be widely available to all Virginians by mid-November. She acknowledged, however, that could change, and advised people to continue other prevention tactics such as frequent hand-washing, staying home if they're sick, and social distancing.
About 14 percent of patient visits to emergency rooms and urgent-care medical centers have been flu-related, Dr. Remley said, compared to 7 percent in each of the last two flu seasons. She said people should consult their health care providers for guidance before going to the ER or urgent-care centers.
Americans Clamor for Swine Flu Vaccine That Is Way Behind Schedule
October 21, 2009AP - The federal government originally promised 120 million doses of swine flu vaccine by now. Only 13 million have come through.
As nervous Americans clamor for the vaccine, production is running several weeks behind schedule, and health officials blame the pressure on pharmaceutical companies to crank it out along with the ordinary flu vaccine, and a slow and antiquated process that relies on millions of chicken eggs.
There have been other bottlenecks, too: Factories that put the precious liquid into syringes have become backed up. And the government itself ran into a delay in developing the tests required to assess each batch before it is cleared for use.
What effect the delays will have on the course of the outbreak is unclear, in part because scientists cannot say with any certainty just how dangerous the virus is, how easily it spreads, or whether it will mutate into a more lethal form.
Since April, swine flu has killed more than 800 people in the U.S., including 86 children, 39 of them in the past month and a half, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of all hospitalizations since the beginning of September were people 24 and under.
"We're in this race against the virus, and only Mother Nature knows how many cases are going to occur over the next six to 10 weeks," said Michael Osterholm, a vaccine expert at the University of Minnesota.In the meantime, many states have had to postpone mass vaccinations. Clinics around the country that managed to obtain doses of the vaccine have been swamped. And doctors are getting bombarded with calls from worried and angry parents.
"Nobody has it," said AnnMarie O'Connor, who waited more than four hours for the vaccine in Rockville, Md., standing in line with her two young children and about 1,000 other people. Health officials "said the shots would be here in early October. But where are they?"Federal officials counsel patience, saying that eventually there should be enough of both vaccines for everyone who wants them.
"We wish we had better ways to produce vaccines perfectly predictably, but this is how influenza vaccine production often goes," Dr. Anne Schuchat, who heads the CDC's immunization and respiratory disease section, said last week.The delays have led to renewed demands for a quicker, more reliable way of producing vaccines than the chicken-egg method, which is 50-year-old technology and involves injecting the virus into eggs and allowing it to feed on the nutrients in the egg white.
Federal officials initially projected that as many as 120 million doses of the vaccine would be ready to dispense by mid-October. They later reduced their estimate to 45 million. As of Tuesday, only 12.8 million were available. (Health officials say a single dose will protect adults, while children under 10 will need two doses.)
In a sign of how rapidly the virus is spreading, education officials said 198 schools in 15 states were closed Wednesday because of swine flu, with more than 65,000 students affected. That was up from 88 school closings the day before.
"Right now, the vaccine is in a race against the virus, and the virus is winning," Osterholm said.The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses out by mid-November and 150 million in December, Dr. Nicole Lurie, assistant health and human services secretary for preparedness, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
"By the end of November, I think we're going to be pretty well back on track," she said.However, a study by Purdue University researchers said the vaccinations will probably come too late to significantly reduce the number of infections. The study, published last week, predicted that infections would peak in late October and that by the end of the year, 63 percent of the U.S. population will have caught the virus.
The blame for the delays has been placed in part on the chicken-egg technology. It is a slow process, and the pressure on manufacturers to produce two vaccines at the same time — for both swine flu and ordinary flu — has made it even slower.
Also, the virus on which the swine flu vaccine is based was found to reproduce very slowly in eggs — much more slowly than the ordinary flu virus. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who on Wednesday was grilled about the delays by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the problem has been fixed...
CDC: During the Week of October 4-10, Influenza Activity Increased
October 16, 2009
CDC - During the week of October 4-10, 2009 [editor's note: first doses of H1N1 "live virus" FluMist spray arrived October 5], influenza activity continued to increase in the United States as reported in FluView. Flu activity is now widespread in 41 states. Nationwide, visits to doctors for influenza-like-illness continued to increase and are now about equal to or higher than what is seen at the peak of many regular flu seasons. In addition, flu-related hospitalizations and deaths are continuing to go up and are above what is expected for this time of year.
Key Flu Indicators
Each week CDC analyzes information about influenza disease activity in the United States and publishes findings of key flu indicators in a report called FluView. During the week of October 4-10, 2009, a review of the key indictors found that influenza activity continued to increase in the United States from the previous week. Below is a summary of the most recent key indicators:
Visits to doctors for influenza-like illness (ILI) continued to increase in the United States, and overall, are higher than what is expected for this time of the year. ILI activity now is equal to or higher than what is seen at the peak of many regular flu seasons.
Total influenza hospitalization rates for laboratory-confirmed flu are climbing and are higher than expected for this time of year.
The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report has increased and exceeds what is normally expected at this time of year. In addition, 11 flu-related pediatric deaths were reported this week; 10 of these deaths were confirmed 2009 H1N1, and one was influenza A virus, but unsubtyped. Since April 2009, there have been 86 confirmed pediatric 2009 H1N1 deaths; 39 of these have been reported to CDC since August 30, 2009.
Forty-one states are reporting widespread influenza activity at this time. They are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. This many reports of widespread activity are unprecedented during seasonal flu.
Almost all of the influenza viruses identified so far are 2009 H1N1 influenza A viruses. These viruses remain similar to the virus chosen for the 2009 H1N1 vaccine, and remain susceptible to the antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir with rare exception.
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