Jefferson said there’s money to be made when a pandemic occurs.

“The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic,” he said. “And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.”

He said he saw no difference in the definition between the swine flu and a normal flu epidemic. Jefferson told the magazine that there are hundreds of other viruses that can be deadly, but researchers aren’t as interested in those because the money isn’t as readily available.

Teresa Forcades, a nun at the monastery of Sant Benet, in Montserrat-Barcelona, Spain, is a physician specializing in internal medicine who received her education at the State University of New York. She also earned a Ph.D. in public health from the University of Barcelona. Forcades addressed the WHO definition switch in a recent video circulating online.

She noted that the H1N1 virus has a high infection rate but lower mortality rate than the annual seasonal flu virus.

“How could WHO declare a pandemic, taking into account that this virus has a mortality rate lower than the yearly virus?” she asked. “Then how come there isn’t a pandemic every year if the yearly virus is worse than this new virus? How come we don’t declare a pandemic every year?”

Forcades expressed concern that countries may subject citizens to mandatory vaccine orders against their will in circumstances where the WHO issues widespread pandemic alerts.

Likewise, MIT doctoral student Peter Doshi argues in a Sept. 3 article published by the British Medical Journal that officials responded to the H1N1 outbreak as an “unfolding disaster.”

“Measures were taken that in hindsight may be seen as alarmist, overly restrictive, or even unjustified,” he wrote. “The large sums of public money spent on pandemic preparedness underlined the seriousness of the threat, and often repeated phrases such as ‘not a question of IF a pandemic will happen, but WHEN’ characterized the next flu pandemic as a high probability, high consequence event.”

However, Doshi said the 2009 “pandemic,” taken as a whole, bears little resemblance to the forecasted pandemic. According to today’s estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 22 million Americans have come down with H1N1 since April, 98,000 have been hospitalized and approximately 3,900 have died. In August, White House officials warned the virus could cause 30,000 to 90,000 deaths.

But during an average U.S. winter, normal seasonal flu strains result in an average of 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths – about 10 times the current swine-flu death rate reported by the CDC.

As of Nov. 1, WHO reported the global H1N1 death toll at more than 6,000.

Doshi noted that WHO declared a Phase 5 pandemic alert on April 29, only one week after news of the first outbreak.

“Epidemiological information at this time was mixed, suggesting a severe disease in Mexico but mild everywhere else,” he wrote. “Actions were thus taken in an environment of high public attention and low scientific certainty.”

Even with the claimed number of infections and deaths, I know of no one in my family and circle of friends, associates or colleagues, that have had, know anyone who has or had, or even a friend of a friend that has had this latest OOGAH-BOOGAH flu.

a daughter in Europe with H1N1

Is that based on government pronouncement or on actual lab tests?

Got a good “real life” friend, Jill, who has 7 youngsters, and is raising them the helath food, home schooling way…..yesterday, I got a request from a Facebook friend concerning her grown daughter:

“My daughter has had the H1N1 flu now for two weeks….she ran such a high fever and convulsions one time during those weeks. Weakness has taken her over to the point where she has no strength to stand up. Here in Ohio they don’t seem to be helping anyone with it, so many are dying …’ ”

So, swampie, I ran that past my friend Jill, and this is what she said (I thought it was relative to your statements …..

“That poor mama. Sounds like the girl’s immune system is attacking itself. She needs balance and support. Two key things would be colostrum (in capsule form, from cows, health food store likely) and aloe vera (liquid or capsules). Plus vitamin D3 from sun or tablet. Also mega doses of garlic to fight bacterial infections like pneumonia or bronchitis.
The nice folks at http://www.beeyoutiful.com could help with amounts, kinds, durations, etc.
The nasty nature of this swine flu is that the body fights itself on overload. Docs give meds that make it worse (like Tamiflu) and people die. Sad sad sad…”