The victims of Swine Pest

Who are the real victims of the recent Influenza A/H1N1, also known as Swine Flu, scare from the media? Of all the cases of people who unfortunately got infected there were 26 deaths and still it got a whooping rating of 5 out of 6 on the WHO pandemic scale, the highest rating anything ever has got on the scale since its start in 2005 (just after the last scare the bird flu). 

It is clear that this scale is not based on the actual lethality or how easy people are infected, a normal flu that we have yearly kills somewhere around 500 000 people (mostly those already sick or at a avery young or very advanced age) world wide and infects millions and it never get more than a ”yeah whateva” from the WHO pandemic scale – the . Where is the sense for proportions here?

I even had several people sending emails, almost daily about buying stocks of gloves, breathing masks, handwash alcohol, sterilization fluids and other such good to have if the Great Pandemic should strike us down.

Let’s take a look at what actually happened. The three top nations had the following statistics:

Mexico: 1 112 cases, 42 deaths
USA:  653 cases, 1 death
Canada: 165 cases, 0 deaths.

Out of a total of 1 930 confirmed cases in three countries there were 43 deaths.

The name itself provoked some responses, Egypt took the chance to rid the country of some 250 000 pigs because of it. Other nations had similar responses, some of the more extreme left-wing people in in Europe started to demand new vaccine factories being built.

For this people where hammered in the media with article after article about how to isolate themselves from the greater society and avoid the pig plague by avoiding contact with other people. The economical cost of the scare when people starts hamstering medicine and canned food is outrageous. In Australia people where told by local goverment no less to stock up for at least two weeks worth of food, for their personal survival.

Whole communities in the US shut down schools, work places and public office buildings for no other reason than fear based in the drummed up scare tactics of the public media conglomerates. Even when the more scientifically sound organisations finally came out and tried to calm people down they did not get by far the same headlines as the stories designed to scare people got.

Cuba closed all air traffic with Mexico, other countries followed suit leaving people there on holiday stranded for fear of a pandemy that already showed all signs of being low-risk.

I find this to be total madness.