What can we learn from the H1N1 panic?

Here is some very interesting archived conversations from Redit that are very relevant to the Covid discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/aonng/wolfgang_wodarg_head_of_health_at_the_council_of/

464Posted byu/reanimated10 years ago

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claims swine flu scare was a “false pandemic” led by drugs companies that stood to make billions from vaccines.

Epidemiologist here. The problem with swine flu was never how many people were getting it or dying from it. It was who was getting it. The age distribution was centered much younger than your average seasonal flu. This was the cause for worry. Thankfully it turned out this strain while particularly infectious wasn’t particularly fatal.level 2mikaelhg36 points · 10 years ago

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2009/08/07/swine-flu-health-expert-warning/does-virus-vaccine-increase-risk-of-cancer.html

This dude is essentially the Jenny McCarthy of Germany.Continue this thread level 2jaymeekae13 points · 10 years ago

Ooh. Do you think you could do an AMA?

Were there actually indications that h1n1 would turn out to be more fatal than other strains or was that just sort of assumed to err on the side of “caution”?

Also do you have any stats of the age distributions? I thought that it was still mostly old people/very young people/people with previous conditions who died?Continue this thread level 2phanboy7 points · 10 years ago

They also planned on including it in the seasonal flu shot, but they were a few weeks too late.

Vaccines aren’t the same high-margin expensive-research game as things like Prozac, and there’s not really that much money in them.Continue this thread level 2judgej23 points · 10 years ago

Who was getting it, or who was being made most ill by it?level 2mpness3 points · 10 years ago

Hey, on a side note, what kind of schooling did you have to take? You should really do an IAMANlevel 2cojoco3 points · 10 years ago

There’s a lot wrong with your statement.

I tried to find stats on this on Australian government websites, and the fact of the matter is that for most people that die of respiratory illness, no test for Influenza is performed. Such deaths are categorized as “Influenza and Pneumonia”.

Any statistics about the prevalence of swine flu after the big panic commenced would seem to be suspect, as a lot more young people would be presenting at emergency departments if they were showing any flu-like symptoms.

As far as I have been able to tell, the whole issue is immensely complicated, and any differences between swine flu and other forms of Influenza are buried in mountains of dodgy data collection.level 2kingius3 points · 10 years ago

It was blown out of all proportion on almost day one. A couple of people died and everybody panicked. An airport was shut down. The media speculated that someone being taken out of it had the flu. People were issued breathing masks. The media went crazy and said hundreds of thousands would die by october. Drugs companies made a killing producing vaccines that doctors since have said, don’t bother with.level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago

It would have been nice for them to determine that prior to cause a world wide panic over it…level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

There are reasons to worry as an Epidemiologist, but in my view, there was never a reason to be worried as a layman in the first world. The infectiousness was always obvious, but so was the relatively low mortality for people without complications.

Frankly, I think the panic made the job of folks like you harder, because a well-implemented rollout of vaccine became much harder. Perfectly healthy people were taking doses while at-risk people were being turned away from clinics.

This should never have been a panic, the media should never have pretended it was anything other than a particularly contagious(yes, wrong word, but you know what I mean — if you were exposed there was a higher chance of contracting it because your immune system didn’t have any immunity prepared), and a well-implemented roll-out in which groups at higher risk of death from the disease should have taken place.level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago

I second the AMA. I think you have a particularly interesting job. What class of organisms do you work with?level 2phlux3 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

I have a naive question, or I guess, more conspiratorial than naive perhaps:

Is it possible that viruses can affect ones DNA – and change it? I thought I saw an article that stated than X% (6 or 8%? maybe) of our DNA was from bacteria…

If you wanted to don a particularly thick tinfoil hat; maybe the ‘swine-flu’ could be an attempt to affect the DNA of a larger population of future generations? That would make for some good SyFy…..

EDIT: virii->viruses for the pedant. However I now see that the in-box spell-check noted my mistake, I was too lazy to notice when I typed the original messagiiContinue this thread level 2I_divided_by_0-4 points · 10 years ago

Nice try BIG Pharmalevel 2anjunabeats3 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

From my understanding, it’s important to note the flu itself wasn’t exactly causing the deaths. Being a new strand of virus, it essentially exhausted our confused immune system and consequently opened the door to things that would have been normally be prevented.

In fact, many of the deaths attributed to H1N1 were actually caused by pneumonia.

Statistically speaking, children and pregnant women were afflicted most commonly.Continue this thread level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 2[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago

Hope your company enjoys the profits :/level 2[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago

Yeah, I have some doctor friends who have said pretty much the same. They also said that we were really lucky it didn’t mutate and become a deadlier strain because it easily could have. They also said we should expect another influx of cases over the next few months.Continue this thread level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1aecarol36 points · 10 years ago

And if N1H1 had turned out to be really bad the same people would be shrieking out “unprepared” the Government was.

Y2K turned out to not be so bad BECAUSE billions were spent in advance to fix the worst of the problems. Had it not been done, there would have been anger about “how obvious the danger was” and how it was ignored.

Anti-vaccine people fume about having to get their kids shots, because “measles is so rare”. It’s “rare” because PEOPLE GET THEIR SHOTS.

It’s not fair to complain about the bother of the work to mitigate a problem using the excuse the problem turned out mild.

(i.e. Why are we wasting so much money on levy/dike maintenance, the town hasn’t flooded in years!)

When H1N1 was first found it was frightening because it spreads more easily than normal flu and it killed people that “ordinary flu” would not have. It’s also related to the flu strain that killed 30 MILLION people 90 years ago.

It turns out to not be quite as bad as feared and lots of people were vaccinated which acted as a firewall.level 2ThePurpleAlien6 points · 10 years ago

This is true. It’s impossible to prepare the “right” amount and people will complain either way. But, the decision making process still matters. Authority figures can make good decisions and bad decisions based on the information available to them. And they can be influenced by outside interests that don’t have the public good at heart. I would still like to know if the pharmaceutical companies had any influence over the decision making process as Wodarg alleges.level 2Kopias4 points · 10 years ago

The question is whether or not people with monetary interests influenced the decision or people with scientific data and human concern made the decision to start a costly immunization campaign, not how people would view it after the fact. I believe pharmaceutical companies like any other industry would choose to modify the reality of the situation in order to sell their products.Continue this thread level 2cojoco2 points · 10 years ago

Funnily enough, when the government are wrong, we complain.

When they are right, then we don’t

This seems like a great motivator to do the right thing!level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago

Comparing to Y2K is pointless. There was no guessing about the dangers of Y2K. It wasn’t an unknown. We knew with absolute certainty that the majority of bank COBOL systems were using a 2 digit picture to store the year. We knew with certainty that similar problems existed in how PCs stored dates. It was not speculative spending to fix this because the problem was not speculative to begin with.

H1N1 was entirely a gigantic guessing game. I could start a guessing game about bloody anything. If I said that reddit puts out radiation that kills narwhals should we invest billions in dealing with it?

The appropriate response always depends upon a function of the dangers of failure and the certainty attached to the underlying theory. Y2K was a problem that was absolutely certain and would cost us trillions of dollars world wide if we ignored it. The money was spent because of this combination. GW is a problem which is less certain (but still strongly suggested by evidence) but would result in incalculable costs which is why we take a strong response. H1N1 was almost entirely unknown and didn’t have as large a cost as either.level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago

Nobody is angry that there’s a vaccine(the vast minority, at least). I’m pretty sure plenty of people are angry that the threat the flu posed was so out of proportion to the risk.

This flu was sold as the next big terror, when nothing justified that. It was slightly more virulent than previous instances of the flu, but the symptoms and treatment have consistently been in line with the seasonal flu.

There was an extremely deadly H1N1 strain on a military base a few years ago. It killed everyone who got it and killed itself off immediately because of it. There was immediate evidence that it was a deadly strain. In this case, we’re still treating H1N1 as somehow special, when it’s clear there’s no risk over the risk that comes with a standard flu.level 2Tecktonik1 point · 10 years ago

When H1N1 was first found it was frightening because it spreads more easily than normal flu and it killed people that “ordinary flu” would not have. It’s also related to the flu strain that killed 30 MILLION people 90 years ago.

There was no vaccine for the first 6 months of the H1N1 vaccine, so where are the piles of bodies due to this highly virulent strain that strikes down ordinary people? Certainly 6 months was enough time, wasn’t it?

Yes, some people died. And almost everyone who died from H1N1 had some known or unknown underlying condition that made them more susceptible. If you don’t know you have the type 2 diabetes and you get H1N1 you could die. But this kind of thing happens all the time.Continue this thread level 1[deleted]10 points · 10 years ago

i guess, and hey whatever im never getting a vaccine for it, but i still know a couple of people, one of whom was hospitalized for quite a while (a twenty-something, otherwise healthy male).

i never felt threatened (despite living in new york, and, at the time, working a few blocks from one of the schools that had a big outbreak) but it’s not like they just made it up or something.level 2KevMike5 points · 10 years ago

I had it for a couple of weeks, and I’m an athletic twenty something. It was pretty mild, but it ruined my entire semester because of it.level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago

You still paid for vaccines for it via taxation.level 2flynnguy4 points · 10 years ago

I don’t think anyone is saying they made up the swine flu, just that it was completely over hyped. Like everyone who didn’t get the vaccine was going to die.

I know a couple of people who probably had it (not sure if strain was tested) and they got sick but they certainly didn’t die.level 2akula-1 points · 10 years ago

Healthy people get hospitalized with the flu every single year. The difference this year is that they named the flu strain publicly, hyped the flu, created a scare with their named flu and created a new vaccine for this deadly flu. So the scare worked on many as they flocked to hospitals at the first sign of the sniffles when normally they would just ignore. The flu numbers were artificially inflated and still didnt hit numbers to impress. Anybody that got any flu called it the swine flu. The CDC never really had people tested other then the select “danger” group. Diagnosis of H1N1 was mainly left to symptom diagnosis. And whats the symptoms of H1N1? Flu like symptoms of course….because its the damn flu.Continue this thread level 1ooermissus46 points · 10 years ago

Wolfgang Wodarg was last heard from claiming that the flu vaccine might cause cancer.level 2cowoftheuniverse9 points · 10 years ago

Pretty harsh article considering he was only saying a new type of vaccine was not tested enough. I see words like “conspiracy theorist” “quack” and “fake expert”. It’s not like the guy is antivax or anything like that. So, is Steven Salzberg a shill or something?Continue this thread level 1fatmike8510 points · 10 years ago

I stopped reading when I got to, “UK tabloid The Sun reports”. Anyone have a more credible source? Perhaps from a newspaper without boobs in it.level 2florinandrei3 points · 10 years ago

There’s boobs everywhere, nowadays.Continue this thread level 2G_Morgan1 point · 10 years ago

What do you have against boobs?Continue this thread level 1[deleted]3 points · 10 years ago

It was real.

So was the Greed Pandemic.level 1will_itblend4 points · 10 years ago

In the daily confusion and obfuscation that is the corporate-controlled ‘news’, always following an agenda for increasing money or power for someone, fantasy was turned into an ‘appearance of reality’ published and promoted for all to see and be manipulated by.

What began as an idea, a suggestion of what ‘could happen’ in the future — much like a theme for a sci-fi movie, turned into a speculation of what might happen,and then quickly was morphed into a story of what IS happening — so easily accomplished with bad journalism and with a readership that is largely manipulated by fear and misinformation.

Naturally, certain rich people, certain corporations and politicians stood to increase their bank accounts significantly, while others, in pseudo-academic circles, went along with the theme, providing the bad-science to support wild speculation.level 1RightHereRightNow4 points · 10 years ago

Always ask yourself Cui bono?level 1Anthet8 points · 10 years ago

I managed to contract the swine flu (along with a couple of people at my employer at the time). had some issues with breathing ok and felt like crap, went to the ol dr got the tamiflu was better within one day. Some people had it worse and some people never contracted it, a vaccine would have been nice to avoid being bored out of my mind in quarantine but no vaccine was available at the time. I seriously doubt it was a conspiracy, some people over hypted it but thats to be expected by the media, they sell more papers.level 2cazbot2 points · 10 years ago

That’s pretty much my take on it too. Get the vaccine if you haven’t yet had the flu and want to avoid the cough and congestion, but don’t worry about any serious symptoms.Continue this thread level 1[deleted]29 points · 10 years ago

“It’s just a normal kind of flu. It does not cause a tenth of deaths caused by the classic seasonal flu,” Dr Wodarg said.

I seem to recall people on reddit saying this months ago and getting downvoted to hell because they were ‘endangering others.’level 2brufleth3 points · 10 years ago

Well the point he’s making is a little misleading. Sure the regular flu might kill more due to secondary infections. It might even take more directly simply because of how many it infects. Swine flu has (or at least could have potentially had) a much higher mortality rate due directly to the virus itself. It is the difference between a deadly flu that will actually kill you and a more typical flu that just makes you more likely to get a secondary infection.

Ultimately I kind of agree with him on this though. Flu vaccines are largely a means for drug companies to fleece the population. They might be helpful for high risk groups but many (maybe even most) people getting them don’t really need them and will still get other bad colds over the course of the season anyway.

People will potentially get the flu vaccines every year for the rest of their lives. If they can come up with some other vaccines and scare people into getting them every year they score big obviously.level 2ricLP8 points · 10 years ago

One honest question here (no irony intended): how did we know in the beginning that this wouldn’t turn into a serious pandemic? As far as I saw (and of course from the media) in the early stages there seemed to big a rather big number of deaths when looking at the total number of infected.

From what I learned in the meantime (which might also be wrong) the virus evolves because the objective is not to kill the host, but to spread as much as possible. Therefore at the time (in the beginning of this ordeal) people would say that later the proportional number of deaths would drop. But could we be sure of that since the beginning?

I hope I make some sense….Continue this thread level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

As much as I’d like to agree with you, my own posts were fairly heavily upvoted for saying exactly this.[1]

Being correct against the tyranny of the majority would be really romantic and cool, but that’s just not what happened here.

On the other hand, reality rather proved me correct in this case — Wow, looks like the head of health at the council of europe is making my exact argument!level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago

Dr Wodarg needs to take a class in statistics.level 2krakow0577 points · 10 years ago

No you didn’t . Everyone said this, they all got upvoted.

People here on reddit seem to have amnesia.

99% of “multinationals are fooling the sheeple” gets upvoted.

Go back and find one extremly upvoted comment about how the swine flu was a big deal.Continue this thread level 2[deleted]5 points · 10 years ago

Yes! I made a post asking about who was choosing to not get vaccinated, and I was quickly down-voted into oblivion.Continue this thread level 2stmfreak1 point · 10 years ago

Humans are herd creatures and reflexively cast out those that go against the group-think.Continue this thread level 2[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

I seem to recall people on reddit saying this months ago and getting downvoted to hell because they were ‘endangering others.’

They were endangering others. My school has been giving out free H1N1 shots since October, and other places around the town/state/country have been doing the same. Also, due the increased awareness about H1N1, more people sought medical care for their flu than would have otherwise. Both of these factored greatly into keeping H1N1 from having a high death rate.

In other words, you can come here and say that it wasn’t so bad because everyone else took precautions. What the hell ever happened to erring on the side of caution?Continue this thread level 2[deleted]-2 points · 10 years ago

I’ve been accused, on reddit and elsewhere, of actively wanting to kill off as many pregnant women as possible, due to my decision not to get this stupid unnecessary vaccine. Well, I’m exaggerating of course, but lots of impressionable twentysomethings on Reddit sure were a little too engrossed by the concept of “herd immunity” they recently discovered from Wikipedia and were very angry whenever someone questioned “The Vaccine”.Continue this thread level 2cazbot-3 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

I was saying this months ago too but still downvoting all the idiots who were using that to justify not getting vaccinated. Even getting mildly sick sucks and it makes sense to get vaccinated to avoid it, plain and simple.level 1rz200013 points · 10 years ago

The operating principle behind this argument is that a catastrophic pandemic cannot occur. The reason people believe this is because they have not experienced a global pandemic within their lifetimes. We are notoriously bad at understanding risk.

Additionally people are likely to point to numbers for tragic diseases such as malaria or point out that over 1 million children die each year from diarrhea from poor water supplies. The third world could use more resources for clean water and mosquito nets. However the numbers do not displace eachother, and a few million added to these numbers would be significantly traumatic to rich and poor countries. the 100-200 million of a worst case scenario, might lead to a complete breakdown of trade and many famines around the world.

We will never know if the pandemic would have become more severe if the vaccine had not prevented the vectors necessary for it to spread more rapidly or even evolve into a more dangerous pathogen.

We have such obvious examples of the unexpected occurring over the past 10 years that I am frankly surprised at the number of commenters here who claim that “common sense” was a good guide for analyzing the risk level of unlikely events, or who congratulate themselves on putting two and two together despite a lack of any training or education.

Auto accidents are extremely rare in the context of the number of car rides you will take in your life. That does not mean that you are smart if you complete a trip safely and were not wearing a seatbelt.

Similarly, you always see the people congratulating themselves for not having evacuated in front of a hurricane that ended up sparing their town. While it is easy for an outsider to see that these people are fools, and had less information to base their decisions than meteorologists advising them to to flee, they really are proud of themselves and think that they are wise.

It is also worth pointing out that it was common sense that lead people who saw fish flopping around, where the sea had just receded, to think it was probably a pretty cool thing to go check out. If you’ve never experienced a tsunami, how could you imagine something so foreign to your personal experiences.

Considering the tsunamis it would have been helpful if some of the less developed communities had strong superstitions about the sea receding. As much as people ridicule religion here it may have a beneficial effect on society if the manifestations include superstitions that override the pseudo-wisdom of: nothing can happen that I haven’t already experienced.level 2cwm442 points · 10 years ago

When the people who develop the vaccine manage to convince a serious majority of health practitioners who are qualified to evaluate such things I will be more inclined to listen. At least in Britain the number of doctors convinced of its value weren’t even a majority if I recall correctly according to a guardian article I read at the time. That stats were about 30/30/30. Also, better availability will work wonders in getting people to take vaccines.

I’d like to believe all scientists were perfect, and that people never exaggerate the truth when they stand to make money, especially politicians, but I don’t.

What really worries me about the whole issue is the story of the boy who cried wolf. If people keep flipping out about every avian or swine flu that comes along what will happen when a serious mutation does occur?

All in all it’s a great thing that quick largescale mass productions of such things are being practiced now, but I’ll take my chances until something dangerous comes along. Just enjoy the fact that people like you can get the vaccine easier while people like me exist and stop whining.Continue this thread level 2monolithdigital1 point · 10 years ago

but of a leap to the ‘religon’ part, but kudos nonethelesslevel 1thevoid27 points · 10 years ago

Cue loads of “Well duh, I knew it all along and was laughing at you idiots while you panicked” posturing. It’s sickening.

It’s Y2K all over again. People like to chuckle about how it turned out to be a storm in a teacup, forgetting that it was because there were people prepared to take it seriously and do something about it that it died out with a whimper. If everybody had sat on their hands and laughed it off, Y2K would have been a disaster and swine flu could have been the same.

Oh, hindsight. How the image-conscious with their rose-tinted glasses love thee.level 2ooermissus33 points · 10 years ago

Anthony Giddens – Reith Lectures 1999:

There is a new moral climate of politics, marked by a push-and-pull between accusations of scaremongering on the one hand, and of cover-ups on the other. If anyone – government official, scientific expert or researcher – takes a given risk seriously, he or she must proclaim it. It must be widely publicised because people must be persuaded that the risk is real – a fuss must be made about it. Yet if a fuss is indeed created and the risk turns out to be minimal, those involved will be accused of scaremongering.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the authorities initially decide that the risk is not very great, as the British government did in the case of contaminated beef. In this instance, the government first of all said: we’ve got the backing of scientists here; there isn’t a significant risk, we can continue eating beef without any worries. In such situations, if events turn out otherwise – as in fact they did – the authorities will be accused of a cover-up – as indeed they were.

Things are even more complex than these examples suggest. Paradoxically, scaremongering may be necessary to reduce risks we face – yet if it is successful, it appears as just that, scaremongering. The case of AIDS is an example. Governments and experts made great public play with the risks associated with unsafe sex, to get people to change their sexual behaviour. Partly as a consequence, in the developed countries, AIDS did not spread as much as was originally predicted. Then the response was: why were you scaring everyone like that? Yet as we know from its continuing global spread – they were – and are – entirely right to do so.

This sort of paradox becomes routine in contemporary society, but there is no easily available way of dealing with it.

Continue this thread level 2manganese5 points · 10 years ago

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.

Yesterday the sky was falling when it came to our energy concerns and we were asking why we weren’t thinking about it before. Now that oil prices have stabilized those same people have forgotten about such questions. But when the oil market becomes volatile once again, they will ask it again. Right now if you ask it, they look at you as if you’re crazy and it’s not a problem. People are stupid and don’t plan for the future is my best guess as to what causes such sentiment.Continue this thread level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago

Logic fail here. Just because two such crises ended up with similar minimal impact does not mean there is any relation between them. It is, without further information, possible that both were entirely over-hyped, both were real and solved by real effort, one was real and one was over-hyped. Your argument is equivalent to the Simpson’s bear patrol. I don’t see any bears therefore the bear patrol is doing its job.

As it stands we always had real reason to believe Y2K was a danger. There was no speculation, the situation was a fact. Swine flu infection rates were always uninteresting. FWIW I have a rock to sell you that can defeat terrorists.level 1the_big_wedding3 points · 10 years ago

Bingo!level 1koolhaus3 points · 10 years ago

Reactions are always overblown or sensationalized. People love to have shit to worry about to distract them from the day to day.level 1CountRumford3 points · 10 years ago

DUH.level 1[deleted]3 points · 10 years ago

of course it was. also the swine flu ‘vaccine’ damages your DNA.level 1[deleted]3 points · 10 years ago

[Any trial run that helps you prepare for a real epidemic is a good thing, look at the lessons learned, the USA would have been hit very hard by their failures, managing the swine flu, if it had been something more dangerous.]level 1[deleted]3 points · 10 years ago

http://www.flucount.org, what’s scary is how poorly USA did.level 1pac833 points · 10 years ago

It was also a false pandemic led by governments who wanted to use it as a way to eliminate civil liberties and inflate budgets in the name of “public health and safety”. Unfortunately for the U.S. government, nobody in this country really bought into it.level 1smek23 points · 10 years ago

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claimed major firms organized a “campaign of panic” to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic, UK tabloid The Sun reports.

Panic campaigns. The Sun. Panic campaigns… and The Sun.
Yeah, that sounds familiar.level 1captchinchilla7 points · 10 years ago

There’s a Council of Europe? That sounds scarier than swine flu…level 2mexicodoug2 points · 10 years ago

No shit. They might start exporting cradle-to-grave health care for all…level 1[deleted]6 points · 10 years ago

Any of you that bought the swine flu scare and relentlessly pounded the comment box with “GET YOUR SHOTS” need to learn from this event and stop being such gullible sheep.level 1stmfreak8 points · 10 years ago

Swine flu is just seasonal flu with a name. In a few year’s it will be monkey flu, or dog flu, or LGM flu. MSM cannot sell a flu scare, but when you put a name on it, suddenly you have a brand.level 2phandy5 points · 10 years ago

Viruses that came from animals are always more infectuous and deadly then those that come from humans because our bodies have never seen them. Yes, it’s true that the swine flu is a seasonal flu, but it’s a flu that has passed from humans, to pigs than back to humans again. The structure of the virus mutates and changes while in the pig and becomes an especially virulent strain.

Yes, the reaction against the swine flu was probably too much, but people made decisions based on limited information and an overreaction is preferable over an epidemic.Continue this thread level 2chakalakasp1 point · 10 years ago

Windows is just an operating system with a name. In a few years it’ll be OS10, or Linux, or BSD. MSM cannot sell an operating system, but when you put a name on it, suddenly you have a brand.level 1Jigsus9 points · 10 years ago

Whatever I’m still getting vaccinated.level 2terrycarlin2 points · 10 years ago

I’ve had the flu, its just flu. If I could go back in time and get vaccinated I just wouldn’t bother.Continue this thread level 2mwarden-5 points · 10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1Andorage2 points · 10 years ago

same as i thoughtlevel 1rebot2 points · 10 years ago

i believe itlevel 1mhatmaker2 points · 10 years ago

I definitely thought that this swine flu thing was overdone. However, to single out the drug companies as culprit is ridiculous. The government and the media both did more than their share. They both love a good “crisis”.level 2helleborus2 points · 10 years ago

to single out the drug companies as culprit is ridiculous. The government and the media both did more than their share

The lines between the drug companies, the media and the government are pretty blurry – so it’s not that ridiculous.level 1cabcaraway2 points · 10 years ago

Isn’t The Sun, cited as the source for this story, a rag like the National Enquirer, or the NY Post? Just asking.level 1Radico872 points · 10 years ago

Well people do tend to overreact just a tad, especially when it comes to things more people don’t understand.level 1gsfgf2 points · 10 years ago

It wasn’t a false pandemic made by big pharma to sell vaccines. It was a false pandemic made by the media to sell ads. Gotta give credit where credit’s due.level 1EastYork2 points · 10 years ago

Who here is not surprised? We’ve seen nations go to war over imaginary threats for the purpose of getting richer. What’s a little flu-scare? It’s a slippery slope.level 1EastYork2 points · 10 years ago

I for one, declined to get the vaccine. I never thought this was a big deal to begin withlevel 1azdavy2 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

In the last couple of days I’ve heard and read reports that much of the H1N1 antivirus is going to be wasted. Then I read new reports that say it’s still crazy dangerous and everybody should still get immunized. Then I read about mass H1N1 groups being immunized in CA, I believe it was. That totally stinks of big pharma influence.level 1Valdus_Pryme2 points · 10 years ago

This almost seems reasonable… but isn’t the source the sun?

at the bottom it says

“To read more go to The Sun”level 1webauteur4 points · 10 years ago

Let’s use an Internet meme to summarize this article:

1. Pressure the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic
2. Develop a vaccine
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!!

level 2noddyxoi5 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

You can add somewhere the following:

a) Spread contaminated samples

b) In early May the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic. Before that date there had to be not only a disease which had broke out in several countries at once but also one that had very serious consequences with the number of deaths above the usual average. This aspect was removed from the new definition, to retain the rate of spread of disease as the only criteria. And they claimed that the virus was dangerous because people had not been able to develop immunity against it. global research

c) Now note that the first flu case was registered in April but:

In January 2009 the United States Department of Health and Human Services awarded Novartis a $486 million contract for construction of the first U.S. plant to produce cell-based influenza vaccine, to be located in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The stated goal of this program is the capability of producing 150,000,000 doses of pandemic vaccine within six months of declaring a flu pandemic. wikipedia

Terasa Focales can explain in more detailContinue this thread level 1jasond33r5 points · 10 years ago

If it is so profitable why have many drug companies stopped making the vaccine? are we to believe that not “Big Pharma” but the few remaining drug companies producing flu vaccine are behind this conspiracy? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to do like the rest and just not make the vaccine in place of more profitable drugs they could be making? Just doesn’t make sense.

The shortage is compounded because the number of companies producing vaccine has dropped significantly over the years because those companies could not makes a MUCH profit as they thought they should. The comapnies were profitably but not hugely profitable like they would be making other drugs. That is greed pure and simple.

Source

only one company now makes MMR vaccine, and only three make flu vaccine, with two of them controlling over 95% of the market.

Sourcelevel 1skyrocker5 points · 10 years ago

hmm just like an antivirus company…level 1Pixelsmith2 points · 10 years ago

Much of the news media is still smarting that we didn’t all die of Bird Flu and SARS. They leapt on Swine Flu like hyenas at a corpse because readers and audiences were so sick of hearing about the recession.level 1bjs31712 points · 10 years ago

look. it’s good that government and news make a big deal out of things like this. people can get sick, and it’s clearly better to be over-prepared, but actual people need to learn to chill the fuck out. we have these things called immune systems. If a bug isn’t killing hundreds of people a day, chances are, most people will be fine. just wash your hands. with regular non-anti-bacterial soap, and you’ll be fine.level 2will_itblend2 points · 10 years ago

But…but…there’s big money, for certain people, in convincing everyone to get shot up with a mix of detergents, mercury and pesticides.

The real illness is characterized by a perceived lack of sufficient funds by a super-rich people. You don’t expect them to actually work for their money, do you?

Monsters like the Rumsfelds of the world rely heavily on the drug and food additive industries to perpetrate their ultra-profitable monstrosity!level 1Fleshflayer2 points · 10 years ago

WOAH! No shit, Sherlock?level 1grantmclean2 points · 10 years ago

A friend of mine died from H1n1 during the Christmas holidays. He was in his late 20’s but he’d had problems with his lungs previously. Still, the disease killed him, so I don’t know how false it was.level 1AngryConservative3 points · 10 years ago

Isn’t this just as bad as Global Warming deniers?level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago

No there is evidence of global warming.level 1nashife1 point · 10 years ago

Uh… I thought drug companies LOST money due to the vaccine being well… free… and they were being compelled to make it extremely quickly.level 2helleborus2 points · 10 years ago

Uh… I thought drug companies LOST money due to the vaccine being well… free…

It was free to some (by no means all) people who received the vaccine. That does not mean that it was the pharmaceutical companies giving it away. The US government purchased hundreds of millions of doses. It may be true that the the profit margin for vaccines is lower than for other drugs, but when you’re talking about hundreds of millions of doses – well, just do the math.

Can you tell us where you got the impression that the drug companies lost money?Continue this thread level 1[deleted]0 points · 10 years ago

Anyone who has the tiniest bit of common sense knew it wasn’t that serious. I don’t know if I’d go as far as a conspiracy theory, but the media certainly fanned the flames.

Breaking news: Young kids and old people can die when they get sick!level 2ooermissus2 points · 10 years ago

The question is when they knew it wasn’t that serious – and the answer to that is: when not many people died.

As far as I know (and perhaps I don’t have enough of this magic ‘common sense’ to rely on), there is no way of predicting beforehand what the fatality rate from a pandemic will be.Continue this thread level 2mothereffingteresa2 points · 10 years ago

the media certainly fanned the flames.

The media usually gets a lot of help from PR firms deciding which flames to fan.level 2theeth2 points · 10 years ago

Anyone who has the tiniest bit of common sense knew it wasn’t that serious.

There’s nothing common nor sensible about common sense.Continue this thread level 2manganese3 points · 10 years ago

Should we blame the media here? Yes, I think they overreacted to some things, but we are adults here who should be able to discern the seriousness of a story. We can’t blame the media for the idiots that overreact.level 1spamdefender1 point · 10 years ago

Conspiracy theorists are sitting around patting themselves on the back for being right all along. Unfortunately, they still have little to say about the dozens of times they claimed Bush would cancel the elections and declare Martial Law, the countless times we were going to invade Iran, the FEMA death camps and that Diebold would rig electronic voting in favor of McCain.

When you are always negative, you are bound to be right once in a while.level 2mexicodoug3 points · 10 years ago

Obama is preparing most of that shit now for his own usurpation of power. How do you know that the war profiteers didn’t buy off Diebold in exchange for Obama’s promise to expand the Mid-East conflict into a full-fledged world war? You heard about the seven new US bases in Colombia, no doubt.

I’m being 75% sarcastic, 25% serious here.level 1[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago

In other news NO SHIT! I always had a good laugh at the sheeple lining up to get their GOVT approved serum.level 2will_itblend2 points · 10 years ago

It’s times like this when i start to really love Reddit. Where are all you good people of the truth really late at night (EST), when the friggin’ sheeple are running wild and posting all those lies?

I have to try to hold up the truth all by myself, and I get lots of down-votes for it. I hope y’all appreciate it! heh heh

(Why do I say y’all? I’m not even from the South!)level 1Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 5 children)level 1Athiesmo3 points · 10 years ago

well, duh.level 1usernamedotcom1 point · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago

This is what the investigational journalist Jon Rappoport has been saying all along, that the swine flu is a hoax.

Also the flu vaccine itself is a hoax, given that it is manufactured nearly a YEAR in advance, and it’s only a small chance that the type of flu it is meant to prevent is actually the one that breaks out.

Lastly, people who are ill may have the swine flu virus present, but the amount the have is NOT tested. In most cases it is not possible to truly attribute the persons illness to swine flu, it is almost always a pre-existing condition.

MEDIA HYPE?level 1geoff4221 point · 10 years ago

NO SHIT.level 1godhammre1 point · 10 years ago

Wolfgang Wodarg is a politician, not a health expert, check his Wikipedia pagelevel 2Comment removed by moderator10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1Reductive1 point · 10 years ago

“Pandemic” refers to how widespread a pathogen is. It has nothing to do with the virulence or even danger. “False pandemic” would mean we thought it was global when it’s really not. H1N1 is indeed found throughout the globe, so Wodarg is simply wrong.level 1mwarden1 point · 10 years ago

How is that possible when the people I saw warning about it were all from the government?level 1[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago

Duh.level 1[deleted]-1 points · 10 years ago

I was never afraid of the flu and laughed in the faces of people who were.

Distraction, fearmongering, and more distraction. Governments deserve an A+ for bringing out the stupidity of their populations. What’s going to worry/distract us next? Another false-flag like the panty-bomber?level 2will_itblend2 points · 10 years ago

You just gave me a weird vision of a TV game show on some alien planet, where they watch the nutty antics of the Earthlings and try to guess which kind of mass hysteria will happen next.level 1[deleted]-2 points · 10 years ago

Somehow, I’m not surprised. I didn’t get a vaccination, because after putting 2 and 2 together, I realized it was NOT serious, and I was not at risk.

On the other hand, I suspected this from the beginning, and it irks me that pharmaceutical companies pushed for mass vaccination.

Who’s to say that H1N1 wasn’t also created in a laboratory?

They’ll just be infecting us with something more serious next time.

Slaps on tinfoil-hat!level 2ehcolem3 points · 10 years ago

Not a bad idea to make money. Except being totally immoral that is.Continue this thread level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1ubergeek4040 points · 10 years ago

No surprise that one of the largest culprits is Baxter Pharma. A huge Obama backer.

http://www.baxter.com/about_baxter/press_room/press_releases/2009/06_12_09-A-H1N1.htmllevel 1[deleted]0 points · 10 years ago

Well if their aim was to make billions, then hopefully next time they’ll be smart enough to make people pay for the vaccine and not have all those free clinics.level 2helleborus6 points · 10 years ago

Well if their aim was to make billions, then hopefully next time they’ll be smart enough to make people pay for the vaccine and not have all those free clinics.

Are you kidding? You think the pharmaceutical companies gave the vaccine away because the clinics were free? The government gave free vaccines, not the pharmaceuticals.level 1omaca0 points · 10 years ago

My father in law was on life support because of Swine Flu. My niece (who has cystic fibrosis) and her entire family caught it too. Many pregnant women and their unborn children died here in Australia due to Swine Flu.

Mr Wolfgan Wodarg can go fuck himself.level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1[deleted]0 points · 10 years ago

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff182/darleenclick/blog%20images/tinyviolin01.jpglevel 1Starblade0 points · 10 years ago

So… if the media misreports an outbreak by over representing it, it’s corporations trying to make money on vaccines. If the media misreports an outbreak by under representing it, it’s corporations trying to stop having to pay out insurance claims.

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