You’ve got to laugh really. Swine flu?! Likely no other single species has spawned as many colloquial expressions associated with deceit, greed, dirty dealings and generally incredible and dubious happenings as the poor old pig.

Irony? Or truth hiding in plain sight?

I’ve realised I would never make it as a pharmaceutical industry strategist after all. Not ambitious enough by half. Tamiflu is just a sideshow. The big act in town is now wholesale (and in some US states mandatory) vaccination, a different and considerably more dangerous ballgame. In the last swine flu panic in 1976 we were told that thousands might die and to prevent that 40 million US citizens were vaccinated. Thousands developed permanent paralytic nervous problems (Guillain-Barré syndrome) and dozens died from the vaccine. Only one person actually died from the flu, and it never moved outside the Fort Dix area in New Jersey where it was first identified.

As ‘Deep Throat’ allegedly informed the Watergate investigators, “follow the money”. It’s a sure way to find out what’s really going on.

Orders for Bulk Supply of 2009 H1N1 Influenza Vaccine Antigen and Adjuvant, US Dept of Health and Human Services, May and July 2009

That’s a total of $1.8 billion in the US alone milked from the taxpayer in order to attempt to prevent an illness that’s generally so mild it doesn’t even compete with “ordinary” flu in morbidity and mortality. That’s some testament to the power of fear-mongering!

Meanwhile in the UK, a helpline has now been set up for people to get advice and Tamiflu without seeing a doctor. Whey hey! What a great way to get a few days off work!! No surprise then that in the week the helpline was launched, there was a record rise in cases to 100,000 (164 cases per 100,000 — still well below the epidemic threshold). Apparently Tamiflu has been turning up at car boot sales …

And it’s been revealed that the government adviser who was the first man to describe swine flu (erroneously) as a “pandemic”, Professor Sir Roy Anderson, is a paid director on the board of GlaxoSmithKline. Well there’s a surprise. Evidently he earned £116,000 at GSK last year, at least a quarter of which he received in shares. GSK’s share price has risen 10 per cent since May. He’s been talking up the possibility of a pandemic since at least mid-April. Didn’t he do well?

More (much more) on the swine flu vaccinations from these two sites:

Fast-tracked Swine Flu Vaccine under Fire
The Truth about Flu Shots