Michael Fumento

[Herewith his blog for Fox Business, titled "Swine Flu Hysteria." I agree with him about the pharmaceutical companies. As I've written elsewhere, in addition to the usual bureaucratic desire for growth in power and budget, the WHO was seeking to cover its tracks for an earlier hysteria - that of avian flu. Moreover, it has been remarkably open (Even if I'm the only one to report on it) about seeking to exploit swine flu to engineer hard-left political change including the redistribution of wealth between countries and instituting "social justice."]Stossel wearing my former mustache

"The Official Word to All, Get a Swine Flu Vaccination Now" was the New York Times headline earlier this month. That followed months of headlines like:
"Swine flu has killed 540 kids, sickened 22 million Americans" (USA Today)
"U.S. prepares for possible swine flu epidemic as global cases rise" (CNN)

But Michael Fumento writes that the facts on swine flu hardly live up to the months of hype.

Hidden within the latest edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
FluView was this sentence: "The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was below the epidemic threshold"...

You may recall all those additional deaths we were supposed to suffer as a result of swine flu - 30,000 to 90,000, according to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (a number I previously disputed)...

But like New Zealand and Australia, the United States can actually expect considerably fewer overall flu deaths because of the swine flu...

Only 161 new infections were reported to CDC-monitored labs last week, compared to 11,470 at the epidemic's mid-October peak.

One reason that there are fewer deaths - a reason little reported by the overheated media -- is that most swine flu is milder than seasonal flu. The Council of Europe now wants an investigation of the United Nation's World Health Organization. It claims WHO, in league with pharmaceutical companies, declared swine flu a pandemic to sell vaccine. The WHO denies the accusation, saying the pandemic is not over.

I doubt that WHO bureaucrats hype swine flu to promote pharmaceutical companies. I suspect that they do it because it inflates their self-worth.

After all the media coverage, scaring us to death, now we'll see if there are stories that inform us of how deadly swine flu really turned out to be.

January 30, 2010 05:32 PM · Swine Flu

"Swine flu has killed 540 kids, sickened 22 million Americans" (USA Today)
"U.S. prepares for possible swine flu epidemic as global cases rise" (CNN)

"U.S. prepares for possible swine flu epidemic as global cases rise" (CNN)

But Michael Fumento writes that the facts on swine flu hardly live up to the months of hype.

Hidden within the latest edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
FluView was this sentence: "The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was below the epidemic threshold"...

You may recall all those additional deaths we were supposed to suffer as a result of swine flu - 30,000 to 90,000, according to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (a number I previously disputed)...

But like New Zealand and Australia, the United States can actually expect considerably fewer overall flu deaths because of the swine flu...

Only 161 new infections were reported to CDC-monitored labs last week, compared to 11,470 at the epidemic's mid-October peak.

One reason that there are fewer deaths - a reason little reported by the overheated media -- is that most swine flu is milder than seasonal flu. The Council of Europe now wants an investigation of the United Nation's World Health Organization. It claims WHO, in league with pharmaceutical companies, declared swine flu a pandemic to sell vaccine. The WHO denies the accusation, saying the pandemic is not over.

I doubt that WHO bureaucrats hype swine flu to promote pharmaceutical companies. I suspect that they do it because it inflates their self-worth.

After all the media coverage, scaring us to death, now we'll see if there are stories that inform us of how deadly swine flu really turned out to be.