Preface
This is a complimentary piece to "State Of Emergency (RT-PCR, The Pandemic Machine)", which looked at the defining features of the SARS-CoV-2 "pandemic" and the institutional response to it.
The two articles re-published below pre-date SARS-CoV-2 by nearly a decade. So, why did the CDC and WHO feel it necessary to remove them from their servers in the midst of a "deadly global pandemic" (when presumably all hands were on deck) and what can we learn from their targeted self-censorship?
Contents
- Introduction
- WHO - Health is More Than Influenza
- CDC - Influenza Deaths: Request for Correction (RFC)
1. Introduction
In their WHO article "Health is more than influenza", authors Luc Bonneux and Wim Van Damme looked at two "pandemics of fear" (their term), H5N1 and A(H1N1) and decried the global health agency's role in these twin "speculative catastrophes" induced by "disease advocacy" experts with "vested interests in exaggeration".
They state:
The pandemic policy was never informed by evidence, but by fear of worst-case scenarios.
Worst-case scenarios modelled by none other than Neil Ferguson of Imperial College whose ludicrous evidence-free "predictions" were dutifully amplified by a complicit media. In the case of H1N1, the WHO altered their definition of a pandemic to enable the release of $18 billion worth of “dormant” flu vaccine contracts.
Failing upwards: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reward key pharmaceutical industry propagandists for their impressive "mistakes".
A simple marketing trick that is used by "public health institutions" as they conduct public relations for their pharmaceutical industry clientelle is to greatly amplify the threat of a disease or virus for which a marketable product exists.
One way this is done is via classification, in the case of influenza the classification "ILI" (Influenza-Like-Illness) allows institutions like the US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to conflate Influenza with a range of pneumonias (viral, bacterial, which actually do kill many people) and other serious respiratory illnesses. Then, with a little statistical modelling to compliment their semantic chicanery the CDC is able to imply that the influenza virus is a leading cause of death, killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.
In his "Request for Correction" letter to the CDC, Stoller points out that ...
according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), "influenza and pneumonia" took 62,034 lives in 2001 — 61,777 of which were attributed to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was flu virus positively identified.
Glen Nowak of the CDC's National Immunization Program outlined a "Seven-Step 'Recipe' for Generating Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination", for example, when ...
medical experts and public health authorities publicly state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)
and the media provide ...
continued reports that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people, helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.
Playing with definitions and classifications (e.g. "died with" vs. "died of"), threat amplification with statistical modelling, propagandistic repetition and media hype, worst-case scenario “pandemic preparedness” planning, all culminating in a pandemic of fear and a "welcome boon" for the pharmaceutical industry. If none of this is reminiscent of the recent SARS-CoV-2 "pandemic" then you really haven't being paying attention.
Our contention, is that both the CDC and the WHO knew these critiques (especially in combination), published many years before SARS-CoV-2, outlined a standard operating procedure that was about as novel as the SARS virus itself. So, in the midst of a deadly "pandemic", they decided to self-censor and scrub them from their websites, lest anyone get any funny ideas that they were in the process of mass testing an experimental synthetic mRNA "vaccine" on a terrorised public. A "vaccine" that would pave the way for vaccine passports / digital IDs (see "roadmap" below), which, in conjunction with central bank digital currencies, would usher in a social credit system1 for western "democracies". A veritable bucket list bonanza for the technocratic totalitarians driving the global public-private partnership.
Page from the EU Roadmap on Strengthening Cooperation Against Vaccine Preventable Diseases
The two articles re-published below, though no longer on the original publisher's sites (WHO and CDC / Department of Health and Human Services), can (at present) be accessed via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
- Internet Archive: WHO - Health is more than influenza
- Internet Archive: CDC - Influenza Deaths: Request for Correction (RFC)
They're re-published here as recently some pages have even disappeared from the Internet Archive. Additionally, the Internet Archive pages include live links for the references.
Notes
1. Social Credit System: "Rather like feudalism, resource distribution is controlled by a centralised authority, who mete out access to resources dependent upon the citizen’s behaviour. This is the preferred “social credit” method of population control in China. An increasing number of China’s citizens need a good social credit score in order to access resources and society."
Source: "Technocracy: The Operating System For The New International Rules-Based Order"
2. Health is more than influenza
b. Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, Postbus 11650, The Hague 2502 AR, Netherlands (e-mail: bonneux@nidi.nl).
c. Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.
Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2011; Volume 89, Number 7, July 2011, 469-544; 89:539-540. doi:
10.2471/BLT.11.089086
The repeated pandemic health scares caused by an avian H5N1 and a new A(H1N1) human influenza virus are part of the culture of fear.1–3 Worst-case thinking replaced balanced risk assessment. Worst-case thinking is motivated by the belief that the danger we face is so overwhelmingly catastrophic that we must act immediately. Rather than wait for information, we need a pre-emptive strike. But if resources buy lives, wasting resources wastes lives. The precautionary stocking of largely useless antivirals and the irrational vaccination policies against an unusually benign H1N1 virus wasted many billions of euros and eroded the trust of the public in health officials.4–6 The pandemic policy was never informed by evidence, but by fear of worst-case scenarios.
In both pandemics of fear, the exaggerated claims of a severe public health threat stemmed primarily from disease advocacy by influenza experts. In the highly competitive market of health governance, the struggle for attention, budgets and grants is fierce. The pharmaceutical industry and the media only reacted to this welcome boon. We therefore need fewer, not more “pandemic preparedness” plans or definitions. Vertical influenza planning in the face of speculative catastrophes is a recipe for repeated waste of resources and health scares, induced by influenza experts with vested interests in exaggeration. There is no reason for expecting any upcoming pandemic to be worse than the mild ones of 1957 or 1968,7 no reason for striking pre-emptively, no reason for believing that a proportional and balanced response would risk lives.
The opposite of pre-emptive strikes against worst-case scenarios are adaptive strategies that respond to emerging diseases of any nature based on the evidence of observed virulence and the effectiveness of control measures. This requires more generic capacity for disease surveillance, problem identification, risk assessment, risk communication and health-care response.1 Such strengthened general capacity can respond to all health emergencies, not just influenza. Resources are scarce and need to be allocated to many competing priorities. Scientific advice on resource allocation is best handled by generalists with a comprehensive view on health. Disease experts wish to capture public attention and sway resource allocation decisions in favour of the disease of their interest. We referred previously to the principles of guidance on health by the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE),2 cited as “We make independent decisions in an open, transparent way, based on the best available evidence and including input from experts and interested parties.” 8 Support from disease experts is crucial in delivering opinion, scholarly advice and evidence to a team of independent general scientists. But this team should independently propose decisions to policy-makers and be held accountable for them.
The key to responsible policy-making is not bureaucracy but accountability and independence from interest groups. Decisions must be based on adaptive responses to emerging problems, not on definitions. WHO should learn to be NICE: accountable for reasonableness in a process of openness, transparency and dialogue with all the stakeholders, and particularly the public.9
Competing interests:
None declared.
References
1. Bonneux L, Van Damme W. An iatrogenic pandemic of panic. BMJ 2006; 332: 786-8 doi: 10.1136/bmj.332.7544.786 pmid: 16575086.
2. Bonneux L, Van Damme W. Preventing iatrogenic pandemics of panic. Do it in a NICE way. BMJ 2010; 340: c3065- doi: 10.1136/bmj.c3065 pmid: 20534667.
3. Füredi F. Culture of fear: risk-taking and the morality of low expectation. New York: Continuum; 2002.
4. Jefferson T, Di Pietrantonj C, Rivetti A, Bawazeer GA, Al-Ansary LA, Ferroni E. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2010; 7: CD001269- pmid: 20614424.
5. Jefferson T, Jones M, Doshi P, Del Mar C, Dooley L, Foxlee R. Neuraminidase inhibitors for preventing and treating influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2010; 2: CD001265- pmid: 20166059.
6. Cohen D, Carter P. WHO and the pandemic flu “conspiracies”. BMJ 2010; 340: c2912- doi: 10.1136/bmj.c2912 pmid: 20525679.
7. Morens DM, Taubenberger JK. Understanding influenza backward. JAMA 2009; 302: 679-80 doi: 10.1001/jama.2009.1127 pmid: 19671909.
8. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence [Internet]. London: NICE; 2011. Available from: http://www.nice.org.uk/ [accessed 14 April 2011].
9. Daniels N. Accountability for reasonableness. BMJ 2000; 321: 1300-1 doi: 10.1136/bmj.321.7272.1300 pmid: 11090498.
3. Influenza Deaths: Request for Correction (RFC)
US data on influenza deaths are false and misleading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably. Additionally, there are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear—a CDC communications strategy in which medical experts "predict dire outcomes" during flu seasons.
The CDC website states what has become commonly accepted and widely reported in the lay and scientific press: annually "about 36 000 [Americans] die from flu" (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 characterizing 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[Abstract/Free Full Text]) 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. CDC states that the historic 1968-9 "Hong Kong flu" pandemic killed 34 000 Americans. At the same time, CDC claims 36 000 Americans annually die from flu. What is going on?
Meanwhile, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), "influenza and pneumonia" took 62 034 lives in 2001—61 777 of which were attributed to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was flu virus positively identified. Between 1979 and 2002, NCHS data show an average 1348 flu deaths per year (range 257 to 3006). The NCHS data would be compatible with CDC mortality estimates if about half of the deaths classed by the NCHS as pneumonia were actually flu initiated secondary pneumonias. But the NCHS criteria indicate otherwise: "Cause-of-death statistics are based solely on the underlying cause of death... defined by WHO as `the disease or injury which initiated the train of events leading directly to death.'" In a written statement, CDC media relations responded to the diverse statistics: "Typically, influenza causes death when the infection leads to severe medical complications." And as most such cases "are never tested for virus infection...CDC considers these [NCHS] figures to be a very substantial undercounting of the true number of deaths from influenza. Therefore, the CDC uses indirect modelling methods to estimate the number of deaths associated with influenza." CDC's model calculated an average annual 36 155 deaths from influenza associated underlying respiratory and circulatory causes (JAMA 2003;289: 179-86[Abstract/Free Full Text]). Less than a quarter of these (8097) were described as flu or flu associated underlying pneumonia deaths. Thus the much publicised figure of 36 000 is not an estimate of yearly flu deaths, as widely reported in both the lay and scientific press, but an estimate—generated by a model—of flu-associated death. William Thompson of the CDC's National Immunization Program (NIP), and lead author of the CDC's 2003 JAMA article, explained that "influenza-associated mortality" is "a statistical association between deaths and viral data available." He said that an association does not imply an underlying cause of death: "Based on modelling, we think it's associated. I don't know that we would say that it's the underlying cause of death." Yet this stance is incompatible with the CDC assertion that the flu kills 36 000 people a year—a misrepresentation that is yet to be publicly corrected. Before 2003 CDC said that 20 000 influenza-associated deaths occurred each year. The new figure of 36 000 reported in the January 2003 JAMA paper is an estimate of influenza-associated mortality over the 1990s. Keiji Fukuda, a flu researcher and a co-author of the paper, has been quoted as offering two possible causes for this 80% increase: "One is that the number of people older than 65 is growing larger...The second possible reason is the type of virus that predominated in the 1990s [was more virulent]." However, the 65-plus population grew just 12% between 1990 and 2000. And if flu virus was truly more virulent over the 1990s, one would expect more deaths. But flu deaths recorded by the NCHS were on average 30% lower in the 1990s than the 1980s.
At the 2004 "National Influenza Vaccine Summit," co-sponsored by CDC and the American Medical Association, Glen Nowak, associate director for communications at the NIP, spoke on using the media to boost demand for the vaccine. One step of a "Seven-Step `Recipe' for Generating Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination" occurs when "medical experts and public health authorities publicly...state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)—and urge influenza vaccination" (www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/36/2004_flu_nowak.pdf). Another step entails "continued reports...that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people, helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza." Preceding the summit, demand had been low early into the 2003 flu season. "At that point, the manufacturers were telling us that they weren't receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December," recalled Dr Nowak on National Public Radio. "It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot." If flu is in fact not a major cause of death, this public relations approach is surely exaggerated. Moreover, by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased. Until corrected and until unbiased statistics are developed, the chances for sound discussion and public health policy are limited.
I am a pediatrician and this propaganda affects my practice directly.
Kenneth Stoller
International Hyperbaric Medical Association
Last updated: 29/06/22