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Thanks to Chet Day.

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THE FLU SCARE GAME
By John Keller
ChetDay.Com / Courtesy of LewRockwell.com
October 9, 2004

http://chetday.com/fluscaregame.htm

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 its immediate link to flu information and statistics
<http://www.cdc.gov/flu/keyfacts.htm>. 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 Data
Highlights page posted on the CDC site
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/nvsr52_09p9.pdf>, 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. Here's the link to the
National Vital Statistics System page within the CDC site that has the Data
Highlights and Full Reports:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/nvsr52_09p9.pdf

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 "Deaths: Final Data for 2001"
report is an 8MB PDF
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_03.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, this page
dedicated to the 2003-04 season
<http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/0304season.htm> 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 quasi-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 the CDC does not recognize the flu as one of the many
causes of pneumonia
<http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/submenus/sub_pneumonia.htm>.

Finally, the CDC's own "Flu Pandemics" page
<http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm> 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 National Influenza Vaccination
Summit for 2004 <http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/1826-8377.html>.
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 CHIRON
CORP's 2003 Annual Report <http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040303/chir10-k.html>:
"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 2003­04 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, Cochi
Presentation
<http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/36/2004_flu_cochi.pdf>.) 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, (Nowak
presentation, page 26), only 22% of parents of children 6­23 months had them
immunized, and only 30% of children under 18 were immunized. Now, I'm no 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 Planning for the 2004-5
Vaccination Season: A Communication Situation Analysis" the good doctor lays
out a media manipulation campaign that would make 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 an article about the dangers of mercury in vaccines and amalgam
fillings <http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller14.html>. The CDC has a
position on Thimerosal (methyl mercury based preservative) in flu vaccines
posted to its website <http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/thimerosal.htm>.
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.

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PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLE:

HELPFUL INFORMATION FROM LAST YEAR'S FLU SEASON (10/21/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8120

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