The Flu Scare Game - John Keller

originally on
http://www.lewrockwell.com

http://www.whale.to/a/keller1.html
The Flu Scare Game

by <mailto:politics@netzilla.net>John Keller
by John Keller



I always know when it's flu season. First, the media begins its usual role
as hysterical government press secretary, uncritically trumpeting the same
cooked numbers about the coming flu epidemic. The steady drone of recent
broadcasts, including one on NBC's Today Show (10/6/04), warn that the flu
kills about 36,000 people every year in the United States. The broadcasts
usually cite the CDC as the source of this huge number. This is borne out
by the main CDC page, with <http://www.cdc.gov/flu/keyfacts.htm>its
immediate link to flu information and statistics. It's a crock, a lie, and
a sham; a conspiracy to generate fear and stampede people to use a vaccine
of questionable effectiveness to the benefit of pro-immunization
bureaucrats, and big pharma. Sounds harsh, but follow the math and the money.

A cursory glance at the most recent (2001) death statistics from the
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/nvsr52_09p9.pdf>Data Highlights page
posted on the CDC site, shows that Influenza and Pneumonia (International
Cause of Death numbers J10 and J18) killed 62,034 people. Quick mental
subtraction would tell you that just over half were killed by the flu,
versus pneumonia, if the 36,000 number is correct. So far, the size of the
flu epidemic seems plausible.
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/nvsr52_09p9.pdf>Here's the link to the
National Vital Statistics System page within the CDC site that has the Data
Highlights and Full Reports.

This is important, because the Data Highlights page is just that, a single
page highlight of all the various mortality stats gathered by the CDC. Now,
let's dig into the more detailed reports. The
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_03.pdf>"Deaths: Final Data
for 2001" report is an 8MB PDF. Skip it unless you want all the charts
detailing deaths by race, age, and ethnicity. The 2002 preliminary report
contains the interesting parts of the 2001 final report, as well as data
from 2002. The second search result for J10 (the mortality code for flu)
brings us to page 16 of 48, which contains the breakout of flu and
pneumonia. Total flu deaths for 2002: 753. Pneumonia accounted for the
other 65,231 deaths. Scrolling to the right are the numbers for 2001.
Again, total flu deaths were under one thousand, coming in at 257. That's
right, less than a thousand people died of the flu in 2001 and 2002,
according to the CDC's own numbers.

Searching around on the CDC website reveals several more pages that call
into question the 36,000 deaths per year number. For example,
<http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/0304season.htm>this page dedicated to the
2003-04 season states that "152 influenza-associated deaths among children"
occurred during the 2003-04 flu season, but carefully avoids answering its
own question about the total number of dead in the 2003-2004 season.
Instead, it goes on in serious sounding quais-scientific statistico
blather: "During the 2003-04 season, the percentage of P & I-associated
deaths was higher than the epidemic threshold for 9 consecutive weeks."
Again, lumping pneumonia and flu deaths together, even though
<http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/submenus/sub_pneumonia.htm>the CDC does
not recognize the flu as one of the many causes of pneumonia.

Finally, the CDC's own
<http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm>"Flu Pandemics" page
puts deaths in the United States from the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919
at 500,000, Asian Flu pandemic of 1957-58 at 70,000, and the Hong Kong Flu
pandemic of 1968-69 at 34,000. These are the three 20th century pandemics,
and two of them killed close to what the CDC is now calling average. What's
going on here?

How is it that the CDC could be off by two orders of magnitude between
their own official mortality stats, and the press kit number of 36,000
deaths per year. Could it be that the CDC is somehow misleading the public
about the relative dangers of the flu?

Here is a link to the CDC-AMA sponsored
<http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/1826-8377.html>National Influenza
Vaccination Summit for 2004. This is an invitation only conference hosted
by the CDC and the American Medical Association. Luckily for the public,
the speaker list, agenda, and presentations are posted online. The
attendees list of this CDC-AMA sponsored event reads like a lobbying group
for flu immunization. Of the 97 attendees, vaccine manufacturers CHIRON
(10), Aventis-Pasteur (10), Medimmune (5), and Baxter Vaccines (4) were a
full 29 strong. Medical Conglomerates Kaiser Permanente (6) and McKesson
(3) rounded out the big corporate influence cabal. The CDC sent 39
attendees and the AMA (proper, not members) had 4. The remainder of the
attendees were a mix of state and local health departments (e.g. Rhode
Island Medical Society), smaller pharma companies (e.g. Solvay
Pharmaceuticals), and pro-immunization organizations (e.g. Sabin Vaccine
Institute).

And did these learned scholars of immunology, virology, and general public
health debate the merits of vaccinating against a virus that kills less
than 1,000 people in most years? Perhaps they were celebrating the fact
that only a few hundred died from the flu, thanks to their vaccines? Not
exactly. The manufacture, distribution, and administration of flu vaccine
is a cash cow, worth several hundred million dollars a year. Here's a quote
from <http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040303/chir10-k.html>CHIRON CORP's 2003 Annual
Report: "Sales of our flu vaccines were $332.4 million, $90.0 million and
$74.7 million in 2003, 2002 and 2001, respectively." Those numbers
represent just the manufacture of flu vaccine, from one company, not
including any of the profits from the distribution, or administration of
the vaccine.

Buried in the speakers presentations from the conference are some
interesting stats. It turns out that 147 children under 18 died of the flu
in the 2003 04 season. Of those, 101 reported whether or not the child
received the flu vaccine. Of those, 22 had received at least one flu shot,
and 4 had received multiple flu shots. That puts the percentage of
immunized children that died at just under 22% of all children (page 10 of
23, <http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/36/2004_flu_cochi.pdf>Cochi
Presentation.) Further in the report we learn that the CDC's own studies
show they believe the flu vaccine to be only 16%-63% effective against the
flu, while a French report shows 61% effectiveness against
influenza-like-illness (without confirming that it's actually the flu).
According to a Harvard study,
(<http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/36/2004_flu_nowak.pdf>Nowak
presentation, page 26), only 22% of parents of children 6 23 months had
them immunized, and only 30% of children under 18 were immunized. Now, I'm
no <http://www.lewrockwell.com/lott/lott-arch.html>Dr. John Lott when it
comes to statistics, but if the ratio of immunized to non-immunized
children in the total population (22% 30%) is nearly identical to the
immunized to non-immunized ratio of children in an admittedly small sample
of children that died (22%), the case could be made that the flu vaccine is
largely worthless.

In other words, the best case these needle-happy pro-flu vaccinators can
mount shows that their immunization program would work, maybe, just over
half the time, but some simple number crunching of our own shows that its
probably much less than that. The coup de grace' comes from one of the
CDC's own, Glen Nowak, PhD., in a presentation titled
<http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/36/2004_flu_nowak.pdf>Planning
for the 2004-5 Vaccination Season: A Communication Situation Analysis" the
good doctor lays out a media manipulation campaign that would make
<http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goebmain.htm>Goebbels proud. Pages
27 on detail a literal "7 Step Recipe" that the CDC will use, in
conjunction with the virus makers, to "(Frame)... the flu season in terms
that motivate behavior (e.g., as very severe, more severe than last or past
years, deadly)".

To summarize thus far:
* The flu kills fewer than 1,000 people on average, not 36,000
* Flu Vaccine is of highly dubious effectiveness
* The CDC and Vaccine Manufacturers are in closed door sessions with the
primary stated purpose of boosting vaccination numbers by spreading fear

At this point, some may think, "Hey, it might be worth getting, just as a
preventative measure. Sort of like throwing a little salt over your
shoulder, what can it hurt?" Plenty. The good Dr. Donald Miller, cardiac
surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in
Seattle, recently did <http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller14.html>an
article about the dangers of mercury in vaccines and amalgam fillings. The
CDC has a position on Thimerosal (methyl mercury based preservative) in flu
vaccines <http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/thimerosal.htm>posted to its
website. Without admitting that Thimerosal might be responsible for the
epidemics of autism, alzheimers, and ADD in this country, the CDC gives us
a sop about taking it out or removing it. Reading the fine print, however,
tells us: "the majority of influenza vaccines distributed in the United
States currently contain Thimerosal as a preservative." Furthermore, in a
bit of regulatory trickery, the FDA is letting smaller amounts go
undisclosed : "..some contain only trace amounts of Thimerosal and are
considered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be
preservative-free." In other words, even if you ask to see the vaccine
label, check for Thimerosal, and get a warm fuzzy feeling about the shot
being labeled "Thimerosal free," thanks to the FDA's accommodation of drug
manufacturers, it could still contain mercury.

When the major manufacturers of flu vaccine get together with the CDC in a
closed door summit with the sole purpose of figuring out how to stick 185
million doses of a questionable vaccine into a population in which less
than 1,000 people a year die, what should we call it? Yes, Virginia, it is
a conspiracy. Luckily the conspirators are foolish enough to believe that
their website is safely hidden amidst all the chaff of the Internet, or
else, are so brazen in their contempt for the general population that they
think we can't do a little math and conclude "The vaccine doesn't work, and
the flu is a flim-flam!"

Eventually, there will be another pandemic of the flu, and thousands will
die. The CDC should concentrate on finding ways to lower the spread,
working alternatives to vaccines, and ways to minimizing the severity of
the flu, rather than pumping out fake numbers, creating an aura of fear and
hysteria, and shilling for profits to huge pharma companies.

Footnote: Thanks to the <http://www.hsibaltimore.com>Health Sciences
Institute daily health e-letter for calling this fraud to my attention.

October 9, 2004

John Keller <mailto:politics@netzilla.net>[send him mail] owns a
<http://www.netzilla.net>Technology Consulting and a
<http://www.kellerknapp.com>Real Estate business in Atlanta, GA.