To make sure we’re talking about the same aspect of this issue, I want to make it clear what my comments pertain to.
Over the last two years I observed public health players, the media, politicians, and even private individuals around the world talk about Bird Flu and Swine Flu in terms of impending doom, almost certain (and at times as a certainty) to cause massive deaths.
Combining to cause a wave of massive fear in the public, these entities effectively yelled fire in a crowded theater. Remaining calm and taking reasoned measures would have been fine. Panicking the populace wasn’t.
What could the public have possibly done to avoid either the bird flu or the swine flu? Nothing. Despite this, the constant drumbeat continued. Anyone urging caution was shouted down and called illiterate, a disruptor, or a person who didn’t care about dying children or pregnant women. To my way of thinking, that’s the precise tactic you’ve tried to use here to silence me, or simply dismiss me and get others to join you.
So what happened? Did the bird flu rise up and kill off half the planet’s population? Did the swine flue rise up and kill off tens of millions of human beings? In a word, no.
You’ll have to forgive me for thinking I’ve been right to urge caution about these strains of influenza. You’ll have to forgive me for thinking public health officials should be made to step down for how they created and handled these two ‘pandemics of fear’.
If that doesn’t parallel the message in the book, I’m still going to have to state that my prediction is the one that came to pass. It was hype beyond reason. That is now a solid fact nobody can deny.
As I first said on this thread, there will one day come a legitimate pandemic. I would hope that we manage the information about that a lot better than this. If folks won’t be able to defend themselves, it will still not be helpful to create massive panic.
That’s all I’ve been saying all along, and those who went postal over these ‘certain to be massive killers’ should fess up and agree.
Thanks for your reply and the clarification. However, I’m certainly not trying to “silence” you but merely to point out that your views aren’t consistent with the facts as researched by the author, not ME. By the way, there’s another recent book written by a microbiologist by the name of Gina Kolata. It’s not nearly as comprehensive as Barry’s book but her research and studies essentially confirm Barry’s point.