Michael Fumento on the Pandemic Hysteria

By Jeffrey Tucker

The last time I wrote about the politics of the flu, Bush was trying to get everyone hopped up over the impending bird flu (Avian flu) pandemic that would require that government have all power in order to save us. Since then, I’ve largely stopped paying attention to the waves of pandemic hysteria that sweep around popular culture. I’ve vaguely noted that the swine flu seems to be the thing of the moment, but, actually, there are so many varieties of hysteria that I’m having a hard time keeping them straight.

Thank goodness Michael Fumento is following all of this with a great eye for detail.

When the sacrosanct World Health Organization (WHO) made its official declaration in June, we were 11 weeks into the outbreak, and swine flu had only killed 144 people worldwide–the same number who die of seasonal flu worldwide every few hours. The mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide. And even after six months, swine flu has killed about as many people as the seasonal flu does every six days.

In Australia and New Zealand, flu season has ended, and almost all cases have been swine flu. Yet even without a vaccine, these countries are reporting fewer flu deaths than normal. (In New Zealand, that’s just 18 confirmed deaths compared with 400 normally.) Swine flu is causing negative deaths!

It also seems that my own lack of clarity over this bird v. pig issue was not an accident:

[WHO] was losing credibility over the refusal of avian flu H5N1 to go pandemic and kill as many as 150 million people worldwide, as its “flu czar” had predicted in 2005. Around the world, nations stockpiled antiviral medicines and H5N1 vaccine. So when pig flu conveniently appeared, the WHO essentially crossed out “avian,” inserted “swine,” and WHO Director-General Margaret Chan could boast: “The world can now reap the benefits of investments over the last five years in pandemic preparedness.”

Finally, as to why WHO is promoting this stuff, Fumento links to a speech by the Director General, in which she promotes a soft-socialist agenda in the name of health, the WHO as world central planner.

Thank you Michael for doing all the hard work here.

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