Get Your Swine Flu Shots [1976 Redux]
Leave it to Canadian reporting to sum up the entirety of an exasperating issue fraught with futile appeals to logic in a single expository sentence:
In 1976, then U.S. president Gerald Ford ordered a national vaccination campaign in response to an outbreak of swine flu at a military base in New Jersey. In the end, only one person died from swine flu, while roughly 25 people died from a rare neurological syndrome believed to have been a side-effect of the vaccine. The program, now considered a case study in how not to handle a flu outbreak, cost roughly $500 million US in today’s dollars.
- Virus raises tough vaccination questions
Canada.com
So… where did the money go? Cui bono?
It’s that time again – time to shell out for a Swine Flu shot – because:
- You don’t want to die
- You don’t want to kill your family
- You really like lining the pockets of your friendly neighborhood multinational pharmaceutical corporation
US data on influenza deaths are false and misleading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably. Additionally, there are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear—a CDC communications strategy in which medical experts “predict dire outcomes” during flu seasons.
… [The CDC states] that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people, helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.” Preceding the summit, demand [for influenza vaccine] had been low early into the 2003 flu season.
“At that point, the manufacturers were telling us that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December,” recalled Dr Nowak on National Public Radio.
“It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.” If flu is in fact not a major cause of death, this public relations approach is surely exaggerated. Moreover, by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased. Until corrected and until unbiased statistics are developed, the chances for sound discussion and public health policy are limited.
- Are US flu death figures more PR than science?
by Peter Doshi
Wait, maybe that Thimerosal (“mercury-containing organic compound”)-bolstered dose of virus you paid $20 to get injected into your arm a few months ago will protect you? Nope.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly doubts that this year’s flu vaccine will offer people any protection from the swine flu. “We don’t think that any of the existing vaccines are effective,” acting CDC Director Richard Besser said yesterday at a press conference.
- Will Your Flu Shot Protect You Against Swine Flu?
by Jon Cohen for ScienceNOW Daily News
The practice of implying or threatening harm should one’s demands go unmet is also known as extortion – in this case the vaccine’s manufacturer is aided and abetted by both media and government bagmen.
Could public relations be a euphemism for extortion?
… what of public health?
