The false pandemic myth

The idea that governments over reacted to the Swine Flu threat is given short shrift in several articles – her’s an extract from one

The British Medical Association is in complete accord. Its pandemic flu chief, Peter Holden, is adamant there were no vested interests anywhere near this – and furthermore puts it in context: the world was due a flu pandemic; the NHS had anticipated the crisis, putting out new guidance for GPs in January 2009; that guidance had to take into account not just the flu itself but the change in national circumstances since the last pandemic, in 1968. We only have two-thirds as many hospital beds as we did in 1997. “There are social changes, both parents in a household probably work, we live in a just-in-time economy, there are only four days' food on the shelves, seven days' supply in pharmacies. We had to keep the hospitals liquid; keep the intensive care system running as long as we could; keep as many people at work as we could. What you want to avoid at all costs is civil disorder.” Holden is convinced of, and pretty convincing on, the sagacity of the measures taken. One of his simplest points is that the vaccine was ordered on the understanding that people would need two doses; it turned out one would do, but there was no way of knowing that until it had passed into use.

Read the whole article via The great flu conspiracy | Zoe Williams | Comment is free | The Guardian.