Are US flu deaths more PR than Science

 “The CDC website states what has become commonly accepted and widely reported in the lay and scientific press: annually “about 36 000 [Americanshttp://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease.htm">www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease.htm) and “influenza/pneumonia” is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States (www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm). But why are flu and pneumonia bundled together? Is the relationship so strong or unique to warrant characterising them as a single cause of death?

David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services, said, “People don't necessarily die, per se, of the [flu] virus—the viraemia. What they die of is a secondary pneumonia. So many of these pneumonias are not viral pneumonias but secondary [pneumonias].” But Dr Rosenthal agreed that the flu/pneumonia relationship was not unique. For instance, a recent study (JAMA 2004;292: 1955-60) found that stomach acid suppressing drugs are associated with a higher risk of community acquired pneumonia, but such drugs and pneumonia are not compiled as a single statistic.”

Is this what is happening with COVID19 now as of June 30^th, in the USA and elsewhere, including the UK? Daily statistics give the “rising number of cases”, the deaths due to COVID19, peaks and surges of cases. The USA media is full of such dramatic reports now as the country opens up and new cases are being seen, resulting in hesitancy to release lockdowns and even seeing some reversals in some states, like Texas, Florida and California. Does anybody know what is really going on?

What if the majority of cases is just due to more testing being done and therefore more positive cases being seen? The key would be to see more serious cases and more fatalities whereas what we are mostly hearing about is simply an increase in cases being seen. Fatalities do not seem to be greatly increasing but the hype is continuing.

Also, there have been questions that many of the COVID19 mortalities are not really due to the virus. Hospitals in the USA are paid more when they have COVID19 cases and are given even more money if they are put on ventilators, even though there is much evidence that the ventilators have not been working in many cases.  Even if patients are testing positive for COVID19, the great majority have had co-morbidities. Therefore, the deaths due to COVID19 are likely to have died of other illnesses, greatly inflating the true numbers of mortalities. Also, deaths associated with COVID19 may not even have had a positive test. The CDC and WHO allowed positive diagnosis of COVID19 just based on common clinical symptoms and not even with a positive test.  Doctors in the USA have taken to YouTube to state that many patients in their hospitals are being declared COVID19 positive without any testing and being shocked by what is happening. Can we really believe anything at this point when the CARES ACT in the USA pays hospitals more if a diagnosis of COVID19 is made?

Also, the PCR virus tests being used are not even accurate, adding another huge question to the accuracy of the numbers we are being given. How do we know how many positive cases there are if the tests being used are not accurate? Therefore, are we really just seeing a massive exaggeration of the numbers of COVID19 figures to suit the agenda of those who want to keep some form of lockdown in place until the saviour of a vaccine is found. One question is why so much of the mainstream media is willing to go along with this without challenging the figures more seriously and to see the inconsistencies of the numbers being portrayed. Also, it seems to be constantly forgotten that the vast majority of serious cases and mortalities are in the aged and those with co-morbidities and that healthy and younger people are not at risk and often asymptomatic. . Also, it is likely up to 60% of people already have some background immunity to COVID19 due to exposure to similar corona viruses. Why isn’t this more clearly reflected in the narrative being given in the media.

What about the flu this year?

What is happening with the flu this season in the northern hemisphere? How bad has the flu season been? According to the WHO, over 650,000 people apparently die each year of flu related respiratory illnesses, which is in line with COVID19. . However, we don’t really know how true that is for the reasons stated above. We have never counted the flu the same way we are now counting COVID19. Tests are generally not used to give a formal flu diagnosis. Numbers are aggregated together based on estimates but the key similarity is that the flu may lead to other secondary conditions such as pneumonia or may exacerbate existing morbidities, which is exactly what COVID19 is doing. However, According to the WHO, there has been less flu in most countries . The WHO stated that due to precautions taken for COVID19, there may be less flu.

However, the COVID19 “pandemic” is now allowing countries to further exploit the fear factor to encourage people to get a flu vaccine  even though it has nothing to do with COVID19. The flu vaccine has historically been very ineffective  and in fact some evidence shows that it could even make the possibility of catching COVID19  worse, as well as making the possibility of catching another type of “pandemic” flu virus or other types of rhinovirus (which accounts for many common colds). Repeated flu vaccines may only further diminish a general immunity to other rhinoviruses or coronaviruses.

The following article that was quoted above from the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC.org)  makes the following statements:

“During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, scientists in the Netherlands asked a big question: Do annual flu shots preventing natural influenza A infections in infants and young people increase their risk of illness and death when a highly pathogenic pandemic influenza strain develops and circulates?  The answer to that big question was “Yes” when, in 2010, Canadian health officials confirmed that school aged children and healthy young adults, who had gotten a flu shot the previous season, were at twice the risk of coming down with pandemic A swine flu in 2009 that was severe enough to require a trip to the doctor’s office.  

Then, between 2011 and 2014, researchers in Europe published a number of studies providing evidence that immune responses to natural influenza infections and vaccinations are quite different, and very much affect the quality and length of immunity. 

Here is what they found when they studied the 2009/2010 pandemic flu season:

• First, repeated annual flu shots may hamper certain kinds of immune responses, making young vaccinated children, who have never been naturally infected with influenza virus, “more susceptible to infection with a pandemic influenza virus of a novel subtype.” 
• Second, about 75 percent of children and adults who got influenza didn’t show any symptoms, and those who did have symptoms self-managed without needing medical attention. Plus, hospitalizations and death rates for confirmed influenza infections were very low in the flu pandemic.
• Third, many unvaccinated persons, who did not get sick during the pandemic flu season, were “silently” infected with pandemic influenza anyway and mounted a strong T-cell immune response to the new influenza strain. 
• Fourth, compared with people who remained unvaccinated, those who got a pandemic flu shot were more likely to get sick with an “influenza like illness” (ILI) caused by a rhinovirus. 

Rhinoviruses cause the common cold and other upper and lower respiratory infections that give you a fever, headache, body aches and a terrible cough that hangs on for weeks. So correlation does not always equal causation, but sometimes it really does.

CDC’s Influenza Morbidity & Mortality Numbers Don’t Add Up

For years, the CDC has been promoting the notion that flu shots are between 70 and 90 percent effective in preventing influenza and everybody needs to get vaccinated because type A and type B influenza causes more than 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. 

Here are the facts:

FACT: There were about 2.5 million deaths in the U.S. in 2013, mostly from heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases. About 57,000 deaths were categorized “influenza and pneumonia” with the majority occurring in people over age 65.  Because pneumonia is not only a complication of influenza, but is also a complication of many other viral and bacterial respiratory infections, the breakdown for 2013 was about 3,700 influenza-classified deaths and 53,000 pneumonia deaths in all age groups, with 20 influenza deaths in infants under age one.

FACT: A federal health agency reported that, in 2004, there were about 37,000 Americans hospitalized for influenza with patients over age 85 twice as likely to die.  The figure of 37,000 influenza hospitalizations is five times less than the number of 200,000 the CDC has been using. That is because CDC officials came up with their influenza hospitalization "guesstimate" by counting a lot of hospitalized people, who also had pneumonia, respiratory and circulatory illnesses, which they counted as probably associated with influenza.  

FACT: Influenza-like-illness (ILI) symptoms, such as fever, sore throat, congestion, cough, body aches and fatigue that are severe enough to prompt a trip to the doctor, rarely turn out to be actual type A or B influenza infection. In the past two years, when the CDC tested specimens of influenza-like-illness cases, only between 3 percent and 18 percent were positive for type A or B influenza.  Most of the respiratory illness cases making people sick enough to seek medical care were caused by other viruses or bacteria.”

What is the Truth here?

If we believe the information above, it makes it clear that:

• Flu vaccines are not as effective as we are being told
• Repeated flu vaccines may predispose people to getting other flu and cold type viruses, including “pandemic” type viruses such as COVID19
• Flu figures are grossly exaggerated and habitually confused with pneumonias and other bacteria and viruses when looking at serious complications
• If the flu figures are so mispresented and inaccurate, it is highly likely that COVID19 figures are also not accurate

This is not stopping governments and medical experts from recommending a flu vaccine, not only to the vulnerable aged population but now to nearly all citizens. This has been the policy of the Centers for Disease Control in the USA for some years now, each year the fear being further pumped in the media to encourage all citizens, even six-month old babies, to get a flu vaccine. To give babies, healthy children and healthy adults a flu vaccine simply makes no sense and is a colossal waste of tax payers money, but that is exactly what the UK government under Boris Johnson is now recommending in the times of Covid. They are at least waiting till a child is 2 years old but are hoping that nearly all subjects will do their duty to get a flu vaccine. Boris Johnson and the UK government said that those anti-vaxxers who are questioning this are “nuts.”.  This is just part of the ongoing agenda to demonize anyone who questions the juggernaut propaganda campaign that all vaccines are vital, including now the flu vaccine, as well as the anticipation of the COVID19 vaccine which the UK and US governments have pumped billions into. The same article in the Daily Mail stated that the UK government is building a £100 million facility to produce enough corona virus vaccine to inoculate the whole country, but also admitted that it seems 1 in 4 people in the UK would be reluctant to have the vaccine. It is likely to be the same with the flu vaccine. The majority of people don’t get very sick with the flu and will not feel the urgency to get vaccinated for it. Even in the USA, with all the  yearly propaganda and fear, less than half the adult population get the flu vaccine.  By the way, health care workers in the USA who have refused to get a flu vaccine have lost their jobs. So much for individual liberty. 

WHO speak!

In the ongoing COVID19 saga, it is really hard to take many of the figures seriously. How do we know what to believe when the media churns out figures which seem to be speculation and exaggeration? As a great example of this, we have the ongoing dramatic statements made by the WHO Director General Tedros. He has yet again come out with another statement on June 29th, saying that “the worst could be yet to come”,  and that the world needs to “test, trace, isolate and quarantine.” “Although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up.” What is he basing this on? Yes, there are more positive cases as much more testing is now happening than even 1 month ago, let alone 3 months ago. However, in all countries, the amount of mortalities and the famous R figure has been declining for months now, even before lockdown was instituted in most places. In the USA with the most deaths and also in Europe, the peak of cases was seen in late March or early April. There has been a gradual decline in mortalities since then.

All evidence shows that the healthy population  are unlikely to become very sick,  so what is Tedros actually meaning and why is this being taken at face value by the media when the WHO has shown itself to be so suspect, constantly inflating numbers, especially for Africa. The BBC quotes him saying, “He also urged more governments to follow the examples of Germany, South Korea and Japan, which kept their outbreak in check through policies that included rigorous testing and tracing.” Actually Mr Tedros, Japan did very little rigorous testing and tracing and has very few cases. This really does seem to be a PR exercise, one designed to keep the world now focused on accepting an ongoing level of control and monitoring, anything but allowing people going back to their normal lives. The problems with contact tracing are very clear  but keeping fear going seems to be the imperative thing for the WHO and its masters.

At least one can say that the organizations like the WHO and CDC are consistent. Inflating pandemic fears is an essential tool in their armoury. The WHO was called out on this in 2009 with the “swine flu pandemic scare, when it grossly exaggerated the situation and it has done so regularly since . The CDC has made this an annual event, as it stirs fear up in the USA to get Americans to get their flu jab.  The USA is the only country in the world to recommend that all citizens above 6 months of age should get a flu vaccine! It is fascinating to see how different countries, all holding to the idea that science dictates health policy, especially when it comes to vaccines, have such different recommendations. Is this really science then or the art of manipulation (at the behest of Big Pharma) in the spirit of Edward Benays, the father of American public relations and propaganda? You choose!!