US Swine Flu Epidemic Shows Signs Of Being Over

[Purveyor]

(02-05) 10:49 PST ATLANTA (AP) --

Is the U.S. swine flu epidemic over? Federal health officials won't go so far as to say that, but on Friday they reported for the fourth week in a row that no states had widespread flu activity.

U.S. cases have been declining since October. An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says swine flu cases are still occurring and are likely to continue a while longer at some level.

But another expert said a future large wave of cases now seems very unlikely. The expert, Vanderbilt University's Dr. William Schaffner, said the epidemic has "one foot in the grave."

An estimated 70 million Americans have been vaccinated against swine flu through a government vaccination campaign that started in October. Meanwhile, an estimated 55 million or more got sick from swine flu and recovered, meaning they developed some level of natural immunity from the experience.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/02/05/national/a101510S32.DTL#ixzz0egrNAALi

[notesdev]

1. Soon it will be time to admit

that there was never an 'epidemic' in the first place, forget about the actual "pandemic" they hyped up and scared people into getting experimental and untested vaccines for.

[NJmaverick]

2. This influenza strain met the definition of a "pandemic"

that a fact and not subject to wishes or interpretation. Beyond that one of the things with public health is the job is often a catch 22. If a vaccine and prevention program works, there are always going to be people that try and claim it was needless panic (even though things would have been many times worse if nothing had been done).

[NJmaverick]

3. Here is a graph you might find interesting

[notesdev]

6. I question the accuracy of that graph

I was following this closely. They classified any death that might have been due to H1N1 as an H1N1-caused death, in many cases not even testing to see if the person ever had H1N1 to begin with. So when you change the rules of how you count them, then yeah, you have data (if fraudulent) to support claims of an epidemic.

In the real world, H1N1 was a remarkably mild bug and in no way necessitated causing global alarm and hysteria. Went real good for the pharmas, I suppose.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

9. So Obama is having the CDC lie about the number of pediatric deaths?

:eyes:

[LeftyMom]

8. The shot was prepared in exactly the same way as seasonal flu shots are.

:eyes:

[gkhouston]

4. The Asian flu pandemic from 1957 arrived in multiple waves and didn't

end until '61 or '62. If a "future large wave of cases" is unlikely, it's probably because H1N1 is going to be part of the seasonal flu shot for the next couple of seasons. I'm glad to hear things aren't likely to be any worse than they have been.

[timeforpeace]

5. But the overblown scare tactics served their purpose for Big Pharma. Bad news sells even if it's

contrived predictions of doom. Actually, especially if it's contrived predictions of doom.

[high density]

7. I figured when my supermarket was hosting a H1N1 vaccination clinic last week...

...that it must be nearly over now.