Swine Flu Panic in Perspective

American Thinker ^ | October 29, 2009 | Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D.

[neverdem]

I usually see about twenty patients in my office, and at least a few patients in the hospital, daily. Over the past several months, my patient load has increased by one third. Almost all of the increase is due to fears about H1N1 influenza.

Patients are coming to the office fearful of "Swine Flu," with symptoms ranging from a slight sniffle to overt pneumonia. After seeing hundreds of cases of "flu" over the past several months and testing all of those who fit the clinical picture of influenza, I have confirmed only three genuine cases of H1N1. Two of these cases were in physicians and one was in a nurse.

All of the other cases turned out to be allergies, typical viral or bacterial infections, or the seasonal flu. Additionally, all three had mild illness and recovered with symptomatic treatment. The graph below shows the percentage of visits for influenza-like illness reported by the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network for the week ending October 17, 2009. Note the much higher percentage of visits for flu-like illnesses this year. (Fig 1)

This graph reflects the anxiety that has been caused, not an increased rate of disease, but the title of the original article is still appropriate. It is necessary to keep this "pandemic" in perspective. We have an administration that will try to divert attention away from other issues and a public health system that is more than willing to help them.

In May of this year I wrote an article entitled "Swine Flu in Perspective." In it I noted the following:

Finally, 36,000 people die from Influenza every year in this country. That's 100 people a day on average!  Sadly, a baby from Mexico died in Texas from the Swine Flu. There will likely be more deaths here, but not in the numbers some would have you believe. However, about 100 people in the US die from the typical flu every day. Swine flu is a flu! Of course, every life is precious. But more Americans die from car accidents than the flu. Do we need to be vigilant? Of course. Should we foment panic? Absolutely not.

I cautioned that more people would likely die but held strongly to the belief that the panic was more dangerous than the disease. Now, five months later, after reviewing the evidence, I have not changed my mind.

So let's review the data. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) report on the leading causes of death for 2006, the last year for which complete statistics are available, can be found here. Note that there were 56,326 deaths caused by "influenza and pneumonia." Why are these combined? Simply because while we have a pretty good idea of the number of people who died of pneumonia, we have to estimate the number of deaths for which influenza was a contributing factor. The way in which the CDC does this can be found here. A relatively small number of people are tested for seasonal influenza relative to the number who present with respiratory infections. Furthermore, only about 38% of hospitalized patients with flu-like syndrome are tested for seasonal influenza and, surprisingly, only 5% who die from such illnesses are tested.

Out of a total of 273 cities with populations of over 100,000, and hundreds more with populations over 10,000, the CDC monitors seasonal influenza mortality statistics from just 122 cities. Don't get me wrong; the CDC does a good job, but by its very nature and magnitude it is an incomplete job. Though seasonal influenza may cause a higher proportion of deaths than reported, it is estimated that it causes around 36,000 deaths annually.

What is happening with H1N1? For starters, as mentioned above, people are seeking medical intervention much more quickly and often for symptoms they would have ignored or treated at home with chicken soup and Tylenol in years past. Additionally, proportionately larger numbers of people were initially getting tested, even when they had only the remotest possibility of having the disease. The fact that more people were tested meant that more would be diagnosed.

Additionally, and even more disturbing, many cases are assumed to be H1N1 without testing. Yes, the CDC advised the states to stop testing for and tracking cases of H1N1. Their rationale? There is no need to waste resources when the government has already confirmed there is an epidemic. In other words, just trust us. The debate is over. I had no idea Al Gore and the IPCC were working for the CDC. As I originally contended, the number of cases of H1N1 has been overestimated, and even CBS News reported this.

I have had twenty-two patients call me or come in to the office claiming to have had contact with patients who were diagnosed with the "Swine Flu." In each and every case I took the time to investigate the contact case to determine whether the patient had actually been tested. In every case so far, the contact case either was not tested or tested negative but was given the diagnosis just the same.  

On a personal note, my daughter developed a viral illness but continued running cross country while sick. She fainted due to dehydration and was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of H1N1. She was discharged after three days and is doing well. Her roommates were temporarily moved out of her dorm room to prevent exposure. I checked on the test several days later, and despite the diagnosis, it was negative. 

Yet even news organizations overseas are reporting on "Swine Flu" mania in the U.S. and our valiant president's decisive actions to protect us. Of course, the BBC has not discussed his delay on a decision for troop escalation in Afghanistan. Over 1,000 deaths from "Swine Flu" thus far in 2009 have been reported in the U.S., and Mr. Obama has declared a "Swine Flu emergency." Of course, statistics reveal that around 30,000 people have died from the seasonal flu this year and he has declared no "seasonal flu emergency." With over 1,384 Coalition deaths in less than one month, I for one would like to see him declare an "Afghanistan Emergency" and prescribe more troops to protect the brave souls in mortal danger there.

Generally, the reaction to this pandemic borders on the Orwellian. Many employers are forcing employees to be vaccinated under threat of loss of their jobs. Hospitals are doing the same, and many are requiring caregivers to wear masks at all times, even if there have been no reported cases. Some schools are considering requiring immunization under threat of suspension.

Evidence is mounting that, as I opined previously, "Swine Flu" is less of a threat medically and epidemiologically than was feared, but is a great mechanism for the promotion of political pork. Our founding fathers taught that it is healthy to regard government intentions with skepticism. We have failed to heed their wise advice, and we are now learning that the military tactic of deception is alive and well in the Obama Administration. While we are being threatened by H1N1, they are using the distraction to infect us with a much more deadly disease that will affect not only us, but our children and grandchildren: the disease of subjugation.

Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D. is president of Oregon Right to Life. His website is frankrosenbloom.com. His book "Lethal Prescription" will be available on November 25th, 2009.

[SaraJohnson]

“Some folks think the government and the big pharmaceutical companies are running a scam on the U.S. public. They look for ways to convince folks this is true. They will grasp at straws to do it, and trash folks who don’t buy into this with them.”

---

There is no reason to “trash” the CDC but there is no reason to treat the CDC as the picture of medical perfection either. It is a government agency - bulky, political and operating where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing - like all big government institutions.

I agree with you that pharmaceutical companies are demonized beyond reality, but they too, are not perfect in their pursuit of profit and political insider status. Government and pharmaceutical companies have plenty of room for skecptism and examination.

After being involved in the medical research business for thirty years, I can promise you, there are no holy or perfect players in the field of medicine. Naturally all are self interested. Sometimes those interests are good for public health and sometimes they should be rejected.

Obama is trying to use this flu epidemic for more power and that is scary as heck. How can he call a “National emergency” when the flu data is not there to support such an extreme reaction? I think he is trying to spin CDC's failure to produce enough vaccine to cover those who want the vaccine in the country. That is going to backfire on him.

[SaraJohnson]

“For me it has been 30 years and the health field has turned into a bureaucratic govt. typed crap hole. JMO”

---

After thirty years in the field of medical research administration, I’ll drink to that! What a mess!

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Hi DO,

They’re basically playing buzzword bingo.

This is the increasingly popular game where you take the crisis du jour and then you extrapolate it into as many areas as you can think of and then report breathlessly on the results.

Global warming is likely to
- Make swimming pools harder to keep clean.
- Make road repairs more frequent because the asphalt will melt

Todays buzzword bingo is more internet traffic due to swine flu. I got something to that effect in my email inbox within the last hour.

One word. Agitprop.

[DoughtyOne]

I wouldn’t argue with that.

[SaraJohnson]

There are two types of kooks that have emerged in this pandemic: The kooks who are are terribly fearful of anyone who observes the virus is dangerous and the kooks who are fearful of anyone who names the virus harmless. Both types become hysterical and attack when they think they hear traces of the other one. Discussions of true or false medical data and information does not alter the hysteria that comes from the either group of kooks.

[neverdem]

How come you have not pinged yet the list.

I didn't get the chance yet, and I also wanted to ping my micro and diabetes lists to this link.

The spice of life

[Global2010]

Thanks.
I forget that my hours are not typical.

[DoughtyOne]

Sarah, I’m not sure what the CDC’s game is. They claim 30 thousand then 36 thousand influenza deaths per year, then make other misleading claims that few die. The idea that we only have 2000 deaths per year is pretty easily trashed, because we have thousands of hospitals in the U.S. and not even one would be dying in each of them if that were true.

That doesn’t even take into consideration the elderly who die in nursing homes or even at home.

Our hospital count alone would go up by 100 patients per day for months at a time due to influenza. People died. Nowadays fewer people are admitted to the hospitals during the influenza season, but they get home health care. People still die.

Imagine a hospital bed count elevated by 100 patients per day, that extended out for three to four months. Then imagine that less than one person on average died from influenza out of that group per year.

With the rollover in patients, this 100 patients per day would work out to thousands of patients, all ill enough to be hospitalized with acute problems, but according to some people none of them were dying. That’s just not true.

The reason I am hostile, is that we have a government propaganda machine operating out of the White House. That propaganda machine isn’t being run without purpose. They want to manipulate public opinion to their own ends.

If we convince people that 2000 died from the influenza, what happens when we have 42,000 die this year? Obama comes along and says that with government health care, that wouldn’t have happened. “Why if we had everyone covered with health care, this wouldn’t have been possible.”

If this turns into an also ran influenza season with a bit different demographic, then his ability to game the system is reduced. I don’t want to see our people help push folks over that edge.

I’ve pretty much said all this before. I know that it was dismissed last time. Hey, that’s okay. Folks can do what they want. I just don’t think it’s smart to play into this.

We now have tents set up outside hospitals. We have people flocking to doctors offices in large numbers. We have our resources stretched.

The people who normally get the sniffles and go about their lives, are now getting the sniffles and rushing to a doctor’s office, only to find out they’re going to be just fine in a few days.

Yesterday I read an article about how this flu season is going to impact the internet. Why it’s resources would be pushed to the limit because we were going to have many people working from home.

Think about that. Work is necessary. Political awareness forums are not. Do you begin to see where they could go with this?

Of course nobody ever had the flu and worked from home in previous years right? These folks don’t miss a trick, and I think we play a very dangerous role, if we help to support the idea this is going to be a pandemic year when all bets are off.

That’s just my take on it. If you folks want to think I’m all wet, okay, think I’m all wet. I can see where this could lead and I don’t want to be a party to it. And I will try to explain to others why they shouldn’t be either.

I was grumpy last night, so I’m sorry I was rude.

Take care.

[DoughtyOne]

Exactly right... I couldn’t agree with you more here.

I realize the CDC isn’t perfect. I don’t believe they are above game playing either. Back in April they and the NIH were both gaming the H1N1 influenza for all it was worth.

Then by the end of September their own figures revealed that 0.0267% of those who contracted this influenza were dying. And that was just the people they could document. There were others that didn’t even go to a doctor or hospital.

While we were having this conversation up here, down in New Zealand and Australia, they were seeing the influenza play out without a massive mortality rate.

I read an article recently that stated the influenza in one of those nations turned out to be 70% H1N1 this (their) winter, and the rest was made up of the conventional influenza. I believe that’s what we’ll see here too. And like down there, I don’t believe we have nearly the need for fear that some have been saying we do.

I do believe the pharmaceutical companies are demonized, but I do believe they are problematic at times. I just think we need to keep things in perspective, and I don’t want to see people think they are all good or all bad.

[SaraJohnson]

I am not immune to bouts of grumpy myself, DaughtyOne.

And I understand your fear about Obama using this pandemic to shut down the internet or any other police state action he wishes to take against the American public and our freedoms.

When the public’s fear of government abusing power precludes our ability to collect and analyize real medical data on the flu - good news or bad news - we know the Federal government has become the major problem we face.

In addition, when you have the government controlled by folks who talk lightly about killing old people to save health care dollars or imposing restrictions on the number of children families may have, it becomes even more frantic for the public and feeds the wild conspiracy kooks.

All I want is the vital data that is missing because the CDC stopped collecting it. How can Obama claim there is a National emergency when he does not even know how contageous the virus is or the incidence numbers in order to determine the accurate death rate? How can the doctor you posted claim it is harmless without valid scienitific population data for an accurate death rate beyond his little experience in the world? People can make up whatever they want when valid public health medical data is not available to check on their accuracy.

And so it goes with the CDC making up the number of 36,000 when their published data on their web site shows only an rough average of 2,000 deaths/yr. The answer is that they don’t know - they did no valid studies on the death rate for regular flu because they did not collect valid data as you suspect. So an honest response from the CDC would have been: “we don’t know the death rate from regular flu because we did not collect that data. However, we would guess - based on this caculation - that probably 36,000 Americans die each year from regular flu.” Medical people would then evaluate the reasonableness of CDC’s caculation and be able to decide how valid the guess might be. The public would be aware the CDC failed to collect valid data on the regular flu’s death rate.

What struck me was CDC pulling that number out of their bottoms when the public was concerned about the outbreak in Mexico. It appeared to be spin and there is no room for manipulating political spin in Western medicine as far as I am concerned. It can kill people and it can kill freedom.

They need to be nailed on spin and their public health incompetence. Given Obama is a Marxist, his spin will now lean towards causing panic in the public and justifying police state emergency now after spinning the public that the virus is harmless when that served him policially in May. Not good for the quality of medicine in the US when a pandemic becomes a political game.

If we recognize the CDC has failed to collect the necessary public health data on the swine flu are are manipulating the public with no scientific knowledge to back their claims and policy, they lose their power over people. Further, if the Marxists think they are going to score brownie points for panicking the public based on no valid data and then refuse to give them the vaccine because they created shortages, they are seriously mistaken!

ONe other thing we need to pay attention to. The CDC just decided to count regular flu deaths and swine flu deaths in one count. They want to manipulate a higher number of flu deaths...just as Obama starts making noise about taking over the Internet. The public won’t know they did this. They will think newly reported “flu deaths” out of the CDC means swine flu deaths and that the death rate has increased.

[DvdMom]

According to this article

How does the CDC come up with 34,000 more flu victims?

The number comes from a 2003 study led by William W. Thompson.

http://www.slate.com/id/2218367/pagenum/all/

[SaraJohnson]

Thanks DVDmom, just want the doctor ordered! : )

[Smokin' Joe]

ping...

Also, Keep up with other H1N1 update stories on this thread: H1N1 flu victim collapsed on way to hospital [Latest H1N1 updates downthread] thanks to DvdMom and others.

[lonestar]

We had a 5 year old boy die this week but he had seasonal flu (supposedly) and pneumonia. He had been in TX Children’s ICU for 4 or 5 weeks.

[Brugmansian]

American Thinker ^ | October 29, 2009 | Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D. I usually see about twenty patients in my office, and at least a few patients in the hospital, daily. Over the past several months, my patient load has increased by one third. Almost all of the increase is due to fears about H1N1 influenza.

I doubt he knows this.

I suspect he voted for Obama and needs an excuse why the vaccine is not available to all who want it.

[Flag_This]

"We have an administration that will try to divert attention away from other issues and a public health system that is more than willing to help them."

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[Pining_4_TX]

There are always some vaccination failures. You are safer being an unvaccinated person surrounded by a “herd” of vaccinated people than you are as a vaccinated person surrounded by a “herd” of unvaccinated people. This is precisely why it is still important for people to have their children vaccinated for what can be deadly diseases.

Our son tested positive for H1N1 today. We think one of his little boys had it first, but his case was so mild that he didn’t even have to go to the doctor. I am a little concerned for my daughter-in-law and other grandsons, though; especially the youngest, who is only 2.

We are in OK, and I don’t think Obama is in any hurry to supply us with doses of the vaccine.

[BellStar]

Prayers for Kalon please has H1N1 - My friend says he is resting, no longer sedated right now. Still on the ventalator tonight. He was able to breathe on his own for 45 minutes and just got too tired.

[EBH]

Vaccine takes 2-3 weeks to work and is only 70% effective.