CDC Swine Flu Histrionics

By Michael Fumento

The CDC is sayingU.S. demand for swine flu vaccine could reach 600 million doses. "That's in case two doses are required for children and adults under 50, CDC representatives said," according to CNN. Really?

If people over 50 didn't need two doses, then that would be more vaccine than we'd need assuming ever last American were vaccinated. But as the CNN story notes, with no irony, "That would come on top of the 115 million doses of seasonal flu that are distributed annually, health officials said Friday." In a typical year, about 80 million Americans get flu shots.

So let's get this straight. The CDC can only manage to distribute 115 million doses of vaccine for seasonal flu, which is many times deadlier than swine flu. But it's determined to vaccinate every last American for swine flu. Does that make sense? Medically, no. From a power-seeking bureaucrat's perspective, absolutely.

Well, Goodbye Mary Lou (Forbes)

By Michael Fumento

Mary Lou Forbes, an institution, an editor, and a friend, is gone. She died of cancer at age 83 and worked until the end.

I was her colleague when I worked at the Washington Times in 1987, where I also had the privilege of working with the late, great Tony Snow, who died of cancer at age 53, and deputy editorial page editor Ken Smith, who also died of cancer at age 41.

Later Mary Lou became my editor at the Commentary section. I was shocked to read she was that old, because quite literally she worked and thought and sounded like perhaps somebody in her mid-fifties.

While we all know about how when somebody dies they suddenly become a wonderful person, Mary Lou was wonderful all along. I have no special anecdotes to relay; she was just a really and truly sweet person. When I last saw her two weeks ago at the annual Competitive Enterprise Institute dinner she was engrossed in a conversation, so I just squeezed her shoulder with my hand and smiled at her. I wouldn't do that with most of my editors.

It was really only quite recently that I discovered that she had won a Pulitzer back when winning a Pulitzer really meant something.

That was in 1959 for her coverage of the Virginia school-desegregation crisis. State and local officials bitterly opposed the integration of public schools after the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., ruling. "Integration anywhere means destruction everywhere," declared a defiant Virginia Gov. J. Lindsay Almond Jr. in a 1958 inaugural address that Mary Lou reported on for the now-defunct Washington Star.

Mary Lou was also a mentor to many a budding journalist, including a a fellow named Carl Bernstein, who sang her praises in a very nice Washington Times obit on her by my former editor Don Lambro. As Commentary editor, wrote Lambro, Mary Lou "published a veritable Who's Who of conservative columnists and other writers, including government leaders and think-tank experts who spanned a wide range of policymaking and political thought."

I'm so proud to have been a Mary Lou Forbes "Who." And so sad that this great lady has passed from our midst.

Swine flu about one-eighth as fatal as seasonal flu - and what it means for WHO's avian flu death rate

By Michael Fumento

With its updated estimate of how many Americans have actually contracted swine flu versus those actually identified, the CDC has given us a death rate of 0.012%. That compares to the seasonal flu death rate normally put at 0.1%.

Specifically, the agency estimated one million infections when 127 people have been reported dead. The official recognized case toll is 28,000, meaning the ratio of unrecognized to recognized cases is 35 to 1. Funny thing, though, that the WHO puts the death rate for avian flu H5N1 at 60% based on the presumption that there are NO unrecognized H5N1 cases. The CDC parrots this. This is especially curious given that where these cases are occurring, all in developing countries, you'd expect surveillance to be especially poor.

In short, the WHO and the CDC know the avian flu fatality rate is a crock and all those people making horrific estimates of death rates if H5N1 became pandemic (Laurie Garrett is worst, estimating that the entire world population will be infected and half will die) are either awfully dumb or malevolent.

And speaking of which, flu alarmist John M. Barry estimates in the Washington Post that swine flu will kill around 89,000 Americans. Actually, it may do so if swine flu just becomes another strain of seasonal flu. After many years it would eventually hit that 89,000 figure.

But Barry is saying 89,000 as a pandemic. Were we to limit the length of time when swine flu could be called pandemic to something reasonable, say 18 months, his estimate is ridiculous. How are you going to get there with a flu that's an eighth as fatal as seasonal flu when seasonal flu kills about 36,000 Americans a year according to the CDC.

Which is why his commentary was in the Post when they rejected my piece on the WHO's political science in labeling swine flu a "pandemic" that eventually appeared in the much-larger Los Angeles Times.

Results from WashPost Swine Flu Naming Contest!

By Michael Fumento

The Washington Post has named winners in its swine flu naming contest that seem to suggest a certain skepticism about the WHO labeling it a pandemic - a well-founded skepticism, as I've written. Among the winners:

- "CNN Flu"
- "Fox News Flu"
- "NewFlu" because it will "disappear as quickly as New Coke," and can be "recycled as needed."
- "Ponzi Flu," because it "starts with just a few, increases until widespread," and then everyone realizes "nothing is there."
- "Y2K Flu," because "It's the same hype and senseless waste of money. Twice."

My, my! Whom can not trust the WHO?

The WHO Fabricates a Pandemic

By Michael Fumento

For five years now, the WHO has been crying that a flu pandemic is a "when, not an if." Now it can boast it was right. Problem is, the mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide, while old-fashioned seasonal flu strikes every nation yearly killing an estimated 250,000 to 500,000. But swine flu had killed all of 144 people when the pandemic was declared - far fewer than succumb daily to seasonal flu.

And in Mexico, where the outbreak began and where it has been the most severe, cases had already peaked.

Meanwhile, the declaration has signaled governments worldwide to launch emergency response plans. These will be costly when we can least afford it, could prompt severe restrictions on human activities (think China), and render the term "flu pandemic" essentially meaningless - risking lethal public complacency if a bona fide one hits.

How could the WHO get away with simply swapping "avian" for "swine?" Find out in my piece in today's Los Angeles Times.

Obama Encourages "Swine Flu as Bioweapon" Kookiness

By Michael Fumento

"The latest bioterrorism attack by the New World Order is likely a beta test," according to the conspiracy website "New World Liberty." It continues, "Yes, it is a bioterrorism attack. It was a hybrid strain created from human, swine, and bird flu from North America, Europe, and Asia. It was created in a laboratory. This doesn't happen in nature."

Actually it's happened in nature numerous times; but these fruitloops can take comfort that Pres. Barack Obama has proposed financing production of a swine flu vaccine in part with $3 billion set aside for defenses against biological attacks.

Fortunately, opposition is bipartisan. "Using BioShield funds for flu preparedness will severely diminish the nation's efforts to prepare for [weapons of mass destruction] events and will leave the nation less, not more, prepared." So stated chairman of The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), and vice chairman, former senator James M. Talent (R-Mo.), in a letter sent yesterday to Pres. Obama.

Aside from the "weapon" aspect, "mass destruction" hardly seems applicable to a virus that to date has killed about as many Americans who die every three hours from seasonal flu during flu season.

But the konspiracy kooks must feel vindicated. Now if only Obama would speak out against that pyramid with the eyeball on the dollar bill . . .

Strange but true!

By Michael Fumento

The flight path of doomed Air France flight 447 took it within just 3,000 miles of the Bermuda Triangle! Now, why aren't the media all over this story?

Mexican swine flu epidemic peaked almost as soon as it began

By Michael Fumento

According to a study just released in the CDC publication Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, swine flu H1N1 was identified in Mexico just after mid-April and appears to have peaked on April 27. Seasonal flu season in the U.S. lasts about five months. Add in the remarkably low fatality rate of swine flu compared to seasonal flu. Now decide for yourself whether the ongoing hysteria, much of it driven by the World Health Organization, is justified.

Nature Bites Nature-Worshipper

By Michael Fumento

Veneration of nature can have painful consequences, as Maryland resident Sam Pettengilll found out the hard way.

The tiny copperhead slithered into: Pettengill's studio apartment at Kunzang Palyul Choling, a Buddhist temple near Poolesville, Maryland where all creatures great and small are venerated. Pettingill simply picked it up by hand and it simply bit him twice on the finger, causing his hand and forearm to swell up and making him woozy before he was taken to the hospital to receive anti-venom treatment.

But what counts is that the snake slithered away and is doing fine. It should have a book-movie package in the works by tomorrow.

CDC tacitly admits swine flu dramatically less severe than seasonal flu

By Michael Fumento

In my "Pandemic over a Piglet" article at Forbes.com May 15, I challenged both assertions of the WHO-backed authors in Science magazine, that swine flu was both more severe and more contagious than seasonal flu. I noted that the very evidence they gave showed the opposite. It was quite simply a dishonest article. Now there's even more evidence as to swine flu severity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there have probably been more than 100,000 infections, with only five U.S. deaths. Seasonal flu has a death rate of about one per thousand or 100 per 100,000. So swine flu's death rate at this point is 5% that of seasonal flu.

So much for the next "Spanish Flu" - more like the next severe cold.

How accurate is the CDC's seasonal flu death estimate?

By Michael Fumento

All health agencies tend to exaggerate the threat of anything within their ambit, whether it's numbers or overall severity as we're currently seeing with the WHO and its threats to declare swine flu a pandemic. That's in addition to including with their ambit that which clearly doesn't belong, such as the CDC expanding into gun deaths and divorce.

For this reason, numbers coming from outside of the agencies and their officials tend to be more reliable. A 2008 study by Foppa and Hossain in Emerging Themes in Epidemiology analyzed data from 1995 to 2005 and comes up with an annual average of 23,710 U.S. seasonal flu deaths. By coincidence, until fairly recently, the CDC used a range of 24,000 to 36,000.

That said, Dushoff and others in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2006 said the CDC figure was too low. Analyzing data from 1979 to 2001, they found an annual average of 41,400.

It would be interesting for somebody to contrast their methodologies. My gut feeling is that the CDC figure is too high, but gut feelings in science are for leads and not for conclusions.

All this said, when it comes to swine flu comparisons there isn't one.

The widely-used estimate for the U.S. seasonal flu death rate is one per one thousand infections (0.1%), though the CDC, using in part it's 36,000 death estimate, employs a range of 0.06% to 0.24%. Currently three Americans have died out of 4,298 "confirmed and probable cases," all of whom were chronically ill, for a rate of 0.07% without even counting hidden infections. (The "fourth" U.S. case was a Mexican national who sickened there and died under treatment here.)

But with any flu, each confirmed case represents many milder or even asymptomatic hidden infections. Indeed, despite its alarmist theme, the Ferguson et al. paper in Science magazine, prepared under the auspices of the WHO, says Mexico apparently has had hundreds of undetected infections for each confirmed swine flu case. Thus to peek below the tip of the swine flu iceberg would be to find the U.S. death rate dramatically lower than that of seasonal flu.

More Evidence the People Aren't Buying Official Pig Panic Scenario

By Michael Fumento

The BBC reports Brits are having "swine flu parties," along the lines of chickenpox parties in which kids are intentionally exposed rather than grow up and catch chicken pox as an adult when it's far more dangerous. These flu get-togethers, though, are probably based on the fallacy that, come the cold season, the virus could be more severe. It won't be, though cold weather does usually make a flu or cold virus more contagious. That said, if there is an explosion of infections come autumn and winter, your child does have a better chance of getting good medical health now. I don't really know what to make of these things.

Pig Pandemic Panic Purveyors Looking Pathetic

By Michael Fumento

Sorry bad guys, other than filling hospitals with worried well, which only takes a small portion of the population, the fear fomenting doesn't seem to be working this time around. A new poll indicates that fewer than a third of U.S. adults would get a shot especially made to protect against swine flu virus, and only 18 percent said the disease is a severe threat.

Now how could they possibly think that after all the devastation wrought by heterosexual AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and avian flu? Oh.

Three Cheers for Pandemic Panic?

By Michael Fumento

The usually reasonable Washington Post and Slate columnist Anne Applebaum has gone hysterical over the swine flu hysteria.

"Where infectious diseases are concerned, panic is good. Panic is what we want," she writes. "Without panic, nothing happens. Up to 500 million people will get malaria this year, and more than 1 million of them will die, mostly in very poor countries. Yet there is no fear of malaria in the rich world; there is no hysterical media coverage, and thus there is still no satisfactory prevention or cure."

The reason malaria has always been shortchanged is precisely because of contagious disease panic - other contagious diseases. Many years ago I was writing that AIDS hysteria was draining off fantastic sums of money from both malaria and tuberculosis. There will never be a panic over malaria and TB, hence those diseases will never get the kind of funding they would in a sane world.

Apple also uses the last refuge of the contagious disease panic-monger, that the virus may not be bad in its present form but it could change to be worse. With that attitude, nobody should ever get married because. After all, your would-be spouse may be the greatest human being on the planet now but develop a really nasty personality over time.

Swine flu is no more likely to mutate into a more contagious or severe form than is any of the numerous strains of seasonal flu that go around every year. Why don't we just have an annual flu panic every November?

Applebaum concludes by praising that "brief, possibly ludicrous but nevertheless useful moment of mass hysteria that brought us such terrific headlines over the past couple of weeks."

To paraphrase Ben Franklin, there was never a good hysteria or bad period of rationality. Panics are psychologically costly, economically costly, and can induce complacency when a real problem comes along. They often lead to the seeking out and punishment of scapegoats. Even today, in some countries, "witches" and "sorcerers" are burned.

One particular aspect of this panic has been the overrunning of hospitals, in which the truly ill are forced to wait behind the worried well who have a sniffle, some coughing, and the occasional desire to oink. Here are excerpts from an e-mail I received today.

I am a nurse at an emergency room in central Texas. The week of April 26 through May 2 was the busiest week for our ER, ever. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday were the top four days on record for individual visits at our facility. Almost all of the excess business was due to people who thought they had flu. On Thursday, we saw 372 patients; more than double the normal load for an April 30th. Number of positive flu tests: 12. Number of positive swine flu tests: 0. Number of positive swine flu tests in our county (so far): 1 . . . The economic consequences are undeniable.

He goes on:

If the media is either directly or indirectly encouraging people to go to the ER, they are actually causing them to be exposed to more virulent diseases. On April 30, about 200 people came into our ER because they thought they had flu. 12 actually did; 188 had colds, allergies, or were not sick at all Meanwhile, they exposed themselves to people who had some really infectious conditions.

"I saw people with MRSA, Streptococcus, Pertussis, C. difficile, conjunctivitis, impetigo, scabies, and flu,” he says, with the worried well sitting among them for three hours. If the media even notice, I doubt the sudden uptick in disease will be tied to the swine flu hysteria."

Joseph Feather
Round Rock, TX.

I don't doubt that he's right.

Yes, I'm writing about the Science mag pandemic panic piece

By Michael Fumento

Bottom Line: If you look at the actual numbers and ignore the spin, the data are actually reassuring. They show a virus both less contagious and less severe than seasonal flu. But that requires actually reading the study and its citations, not just the abstract and press release. What self-respecting reporter would do that? Why would one want to when it's fear, not facts, that sell.

It also helps to know the paper was written under the auspices of the planet's chief chicken little, the WHO.