Swine Flu? A Panic Stoked in Order to Posture and Spend

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Swine flu? A panic stoked in order to posture and spend

Despite the hysteria, the risk to Britons' health is tiny - but that news won't sell papers or drugs, or justify the WHO's budget


We have gone demented. Two Britons are or were (not very) ill from flu. "This could really explode," intones a reporter for BBC News. "London warned: it's here," cries the Evening Standard. Fear is said to be spreading "like a Mexican wave". It "could affect" three-quarters of a million Britons. It "could cost" three trillion dollars. The "danger", according to the radio, is that workers who are not ill will be "worried" (perhaps by the reporter) and fail to turn up at power stations and hospitals.

Appropriately panicked, on Monday ministers plunged into their Cobra bunker beneath Whitehall to prepare for the worst. Had Tony Blair been about they would have worn germ warfare suits. British government is barking mad.

What is swine flu? It is flu, a mutation of the H1N1 virus of the sort that often occurs. It is not a pandemic, despite the media prefix, not yet. The BBC calls it a "potentially terrible virus", but any viral infection is potentially terrible. Flu makes you feel ill. You should take medicine and rest. You will then get well again, unless you are very unlucky or have some complicating condition. It is best to avoid close contact with other people, as applies to a common cold.

In Mexico, 2,000 people have been diagnosed as suffering swine flu. Some 150 of them have died, though there is said to be no pathological indication of all these deaths being linked to the new flu strain. People die all the time after catching flu, especially if not medicated.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/29/swine-flu-mexico-uk-media1

[47of74]

1. And neither would the fact...

...that tens of thousands of people die every year from regular flu sell papers or ad space on tv/radio.

[Democrats_win]

2. It' reasonable to wonder. Yet the Katrina/911 syndrom may be to blame.

It's better that those responsible for protecting our nation's health actually do that rather than slough it off like bush did in Katrina and 9/11.

The correct question is, what are these people being paid to do other than protect us from the swine flu? They ARE getting paid for this. They aren't Republicans, getting paid and not doing anything.

[xchrom]

3. i think a 'new syndrome' has arisen --

those who have found a 'legitimate' reason to take less than seriously diseases, natural diasters,
anythin they DEEM as panic inducing -- as cover for their empathic shortcomings or as a denial of their responsibilitiy to live in community with others.

[TBF]

4. But people might talk about torture or union workers losing their jobs -

best to give them something else to worry their little minds.

[FraDon]

5. • Seems 2 me :: SwineFlue / H1N1 = Germ Warfare.

The research & development "skunkworks" have never closed. Better weapons research, testing and deployment is the opposable thumb of the Fist of Fascism. I'd gamble my lunch money that these toxic tentacles reach back to same black-ops crew who engineered the anthrax "attacks" (gag me with another metaphor).

There's just too frackin much money to be made from pulling the $tring$.