How WHO found the pandemic that wasn’t

This should be a cautionary tale about trusting any agency of the United Nations.   Even with the best of intentions and the labour of many thousands of hard working and committed people, anything run by the UN is ultimately shot through with the ideologically driven politics of its member nations and the institutional elites that it draws its top bureaucrats from.   Plus, the agencies themselves become self serving and self perpetuating. Look at the extraordinary gravy train that is the IPCC. Does anyone seriously expect it to willingly turn around and ever express any doubt about the fake climate "crisis" that keeps them in fabulously well paid jobs, with endless first class air travel and five star hotel or resort accommodation? Not likely in my view.   Getting back to the WHO and how the politics of the member nations can distort things, it wasn't that long ago that the WHO abandoned the scientific gold standard of properly randomised blind trials as the only acceptable level of evidence in making its decisions.   This was partly as a sop to countries with still significant numbers of people living "traditional" lifestyles and their traditional "ways of knowing" and "wisdom."   What this means in reality is that in determining matters of policy related to our health the WHO will now give time effectively to witch doctors, shamans and other peddlers of idiot superstitions. So our retreat from the Enlightenment and reason continues. Michael Fumento on how one of the world’s mildest flu viruses became one of the world’s biggest scares: A global flu pandemic is a “when, not an if.” So the World Health Organization (WHO) has been crying for five years. Now it can boast it was right. Problem is, the mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide, while old-fashioned seasonal flu strikes every nation yearly killing an estimated 250,000 to 500,000. But only 144 people had succumbed to H1N1 swine flu when the WHO declared its pandemic – far less than seasonal flu’s daily toll. Further, in Mexico, where the outbreak began and where it has been the most severe, cases had already peaked. You see, ... (to) gets its pandemic, the organization used its own bizarre, unscientific new definition....   The organization’s definition for “influenza pandemic” once required “several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” But in 2005, it promulgated a new one that virtually ignores case numbers and completely ignores deaths. Now it requires “sustained chains of human-to-human transmission leading to community-wide outbreaks” in two parts of the world, with this addition: The cause must be an animal or human-animal flu virus; the latter known as a genetic reassortment.   Thus, under the 2005 definition, “community-wide outbreaks” of swine flu in two South American countries and somewhere in China could qualify as a pandemic. No deaths required. Meanwhile, a pure human flu that killed 20 million people would not qualify. Fact is, the kind of flu WHO now freaks over is the least likely to actually kill.   UPDATE Now experts in Victoria concede it might actually be good to contract this swine flu: “Some good things have come from the current outbreak,’’ say the doctors based at the Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology Department of Austin Health, in Melbourne.  “It is possible ... that people who caught swine flu this year may have some protection for next year’s possibly more aggressive strain.” In which case, may it have been a mistake to try to stop more of us catching it now?   Andrew Bolt

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