Nuke Gingrich

Remember the story of Felipe Solis?

On April 16, “President Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported.” link

Well, Mexican authorities are now saying that Solis died of a heart attack,  not the flu.  Further, his death occurred one week after greeting Obama, not one day later as originally reported.  This is according to a report from Greg Contreras.

Odd, isn’t it?

From full-court press coverage of infections, inspections, and detections*, of the potential world-wide swine flu pandemic, climaxing with Joe Biden’s famous declaration that there was no way he was getting on public transportation, coverage of the spread of H1N1 has undergone an overnight transformation. Now, only the official numbers from W.H.O. are reported.  Headlines are suggesting that Mexico has turned the corner,  the spread of the disease is stabilizing, and the proverbial bullet has been dodged.

Actual numbers of infections and deaths have shrunk to non-panic inducing levels, and, except for the large number of school closings, it is back to normal in the US. But, are the statistics reliable? One of the more interesting articles I read over the weekend was from Newsweek, which included this snippet:

Another physician, who spoke with NEWSWEEK en Español but asked not to be identified, claimed that in the Gea González Hospital—the biggest facility run by the Ministry of Health in Mexico City—doctors have been explicitly told not to record pneumonia as a cause of death. “You must say that they died of cardiac arrest or anything else,” said the physician about the instruction given to them.

It makes me wonder if this could be related to the Felipe Solis story …

And, today, Fox News is reporting that WHO is likely to raise the pandemic threat level to 6, and declare an official pandemic.

Go figure.

*from alice’s restaraunt