Monday, October 26, 2009

Pandemic???

Clearly, I am not a health care professional, I am just a skeptic about our government. When you have administration officials and national leaders telling us that a crisis is something to take advantage of and to never waste a good crisis, it leaves me a little suspicious when we hear that there is a new crisis-of-the-week.

A year ago, we responded to the earth-shaking crisis that had to be dealt with by passing TARP (troubled asset relief program). We got not help with troubled assets, but we went in further debt as a nation so that various Wall Street businesses could be given billions of our dollars.

As soon as Obama took office, we had to pass Stimulus 1 to solve the immediate doom and keep a worldwide economic collapse from happening. It passed and what we got was more money for favorite businesses, ACORN, a promise unemployment would not go over 8%, etc. We did not get the results we were promised and the money was wasted.

Our government is in the mode of having one crisis after another that only they can solve for us, making us all dependant upon them for our daily living.

Now, I am just wondering about the current "crisis", the H1N1 (swine flu) pending pandemic. Again, I am not anything other than a citizen who does not trust our current government and am suspicious of just about everything they tell us right now. So, I paid attention to some of the facts that are published about the flu.

As of last July, the government states that they stopped counting swine flu cases as it was already over one million. So, let's assume, as of now, there may be over two million cases in the U.S. so far. It was announced, as of 10/23/2009, there had been 1,000 deaths due to swine flu and that about 100 of these were children (around 10%).

That equals a death rate of .0005% for all cases and for children, .00005%. Not to take any of the deaths lightly, especially when it is a young person, are these rates equal to the high level of panic that we are being fed? Have you noticed that the emphasis, which will tug on our emotional strings, is about how this flu attacks children more than others? If a child is someone up to age 18 and their deaths account for 10% of total deaths, that would mean that for each of the other 18 year age group ranges, they are dying at a rate higher than 10%. If this were not so, it would take people living to be over 180 years old in order to average other age groups at less than 10%.

According to sources on the Internet, a typical flu season in the U.S. takes 30,000-50,000 lives. So, I am just wondering out loud, is there some reason that this swine flu is a more serious threat than any other flu? So, far, the statistics do not appear to be pointing out that that is the case.

My skepticism causes me to question if there is a motive to promote the swine flu as a major health crisis looming just over the horizon? Is it just big brother trying, again, to convince us that we cannot survive another day without total dependence upon them to save us?

I yield the floor to those more knowledgeable on this subject...

1 comment:

  1. Not claiming to have much knowledge on this. I do believe wholeheartedly that it is being blown WAY out of proportion. I also think that the concerns about the vaccination are blown out of proportion, too, though. Every year, the characteristics of the regular flu are different than the years before, meaning, they only have so much time between the first cases of flu each year and coming out with the vaccine to do any research. The swine flu vaccine has received at least as much research as the regular flu vaccines do each year.
    That being said, I am not concerned about getting the shot for Ben, nor do I worry about Mark. I think that anyone I've seen who had it felt like they had the flu and got over it. Some things, I think, it's better just to let the body fight off. But, with the POTENTIAL of serious health repurcussions for a pregnant woman, I went ahead and got it for myself for some peace of mind.
    I do think you're right, though. It doesn't add up when you think about the media coverage and public concern over this when it has seriously affected so few people!

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