How WHO Found The Pandemic That Wasn’t

By Andrew Bolt.

Michael Fumento on how one of the world’s mildest flu viruses became one of the world’s biggest scares:

A global flu pandemic is a “when, not an if.” So the World Health Organization (WHO) has been crying for five years. 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 only 144 people had succumbed to H1N1 swine flu when the WHO declared its pandemic – far less than seasonal flu’s daily toll. Further, in Mexico, where the outbreak began and where it has been the most severe, cases had already peaked.

You see, … (to) gets its pandemic, the organization used its own bizarre, unscientific new definition….

The organization’s definition for “influenza pandemic” once required “several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” But in 2005, it promulgated a new one that virtually ignores case numbers and completely ignores deaths. Now it requires “sustained chains of human-to-human transmission leading to community-wide outbreaks” in two parts of the world, with this addition: The cause must be an animal or human-animal flu virus; the latter known as a genetic reassortment.

Thus, under the 2005 definition, “community-wide outbreaks” of swine flu in two South American countries and somewhere in China could qualify as a pandemic. No deaths required. Meanwhile, a pure human flu that killed 20 million people would not qualify.

Fact is, the kind of flu WHO now freaks over is the least likely to actually kill.

UPDATE

Now experts in Victoria (Australia) concede it might actually be good to contract this swine flu:

“Some good things have come from the current outbreak,’’ say the doctors based at the Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology Department of Austin Health, in Melbourne.  “It is possible … that people who caught swine flu this year may have some protection for next year’s possibly more aggressive strain.”

In which case, may it have been a mistake to try to stop more of us catching it now?

TonyfromOz adds …..

It would seem that this is another case where a United Nations body is acting as the arbiter for what it thinks the rest of the World should be doing, and also another case of scaremongering the absolute worst case scenario. Another classic case of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

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