Free Republic

David Axelrod, who once wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune defending the widespread and corrupt Chicago practice of patronage hiring, accused the GOP of playing by Chicago rules on The Daily Show last night. Much better, though, he took credit for stopping the swine flu near the end of the clip below. "I'd argue that we have shown a baseline level of competence...Take the H1N1 flu for example. We jumped on that quickly...I think we averted a larger public health disaster."

THE swine flu scare was a "false pandemic" led by drugs companies that stood to make billions from vaccines, a leading health expert said. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claimed major firms organized a "campaign of panic" to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic, UK tabloid The Sun reports. He believes it is, "one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century", and has called for an inquiry. An emergency debate on the issue will be held by the Council of Europe later this month.

Three agencies are teaming up with Sesame Street to prepare school children for the new threat of the H1N1 virus. The White House announced Tuesday morning that the Homeland Security, Education, and Health and Human Services departments are enlisting the help of Elmo and Gordon from the long-running educational show to teach children how to avoid H1N1, also know as the swine flu. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with the secretaries of those three agencies and other administration officials later Tuesday afternoon to discuss the threat. Elmo, Gordon, the Sesame Workshop and the federal agencies will try to...

ATLANTA – The swine flu virus that has frightened the world is beginning to look a little less ominous. New York City officials reported Friday that the swine flu still has not spread beyond a few schools. In Mexico, very few relatives of flu victims seem to have caught the virus. One flu expert says there's no reason to believe the new virus is a more serious strain than seasonal flu. And a federal health official said the new flu virus doesn't appear to have genes that made the 1918 pandemic flu strain so deadly. ...