The Pandemic That Isn’t
I know I said I wasn’t going to do anything on the Swine Flu issue, but Sandy over at Junkfood Science has done a fabulous job of cutting through the media hype and hysteria over this, and well………..I just couldn’t NOT do something here.
Swine Flu update: April 29, 2009
Part One of the Swine Flu epidemic here.
By the end of the day, panic over swine flu had reached pandemic proportions, with more than 117,607 news stories appearing on Google News. As media professor, Robert Thompson, at Syracuse University in New York, told Reuters this morning: “If as many people had swine flu as those [in media] that are covering swine flu, then it would be a pandemic to reckon with.”
He was more right than readers realize. As of tonight, the World Health Organization’s Swine Influenza Update reports 91 confirmed cases of the swine flu in the United States and one death; while Mexico has 26 confirmed cases, including seven deaths.
117 cases
117,607 news stories
That’s 1,005 news stories for each case of the flu.
Read the FULL STORY here.
Realizing that the CDC‘s own statistics show that over 30,000 people – in the U.S. alone – die every single year from influenza (63,000 in 2005); and the World Health Organization‘s (WHO) own statistics state that between 250,000 and 500,000 people die every single year globally from influenza, I’ve been wondering WHY all the hysteria over less than 2,000 cases globally and less than 200 deaths globally? I don’t hear about pandemic levels every year during flu season. So why all the hysteria so soon?
The media is having a field day with this. The fact that the WHO is calling this a near pandemic has me questioning their credibility. Actually, it is just confirming their lack of credibility for me.
The bigger question for me though is WHY they feel the need to try to keep us in a constant state of fear? Why are so few of us questioning this?
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I have found out recently about an interesting duality of the swine flu issue. The US at least is no longer tracking it as separate, but rather grouping all cases in with regular flu stats now. However, the WHO is ready to list it to pandemic status, due to reach, instead of results…..weird.
Mike Lovell said this on June 10, 2009 at 7:54 am |
Mike, where did you read/hear that? Can you direct me to it? I’m not even surprised by this as this is probably how they do everything.
swfreedomlover said this on June 11, 2009 at 6:42 am |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090611/ap_on_he_me/un_un_swine_flu
This is the article on it being declared a pandemic officially. I have been unable to find a story saying the CDC or whoever was going to lump the stats together….I orginally heard that on one radio station or another during the top of the hour news blurbs between my talk radio programs I listen to during my worktime.
Mike Lovell said this on June 11, 2009 at 8:08 am |