WHO To Investigate Handling of Swine Flu Information, Vaccine Orders 372
krou writes "With swine flu fading in the UK (projected winter deaths of 65,000 have been downgraded to 1,000, and new cases are decreasing) the UK government has been left with millions of unused vaccines, and (unlike its contract with Baxter) no clear break-clause to get out of its contract with GlaxoSmithKlein. Although the amount paid for vaccines has not been disclosed, it likely cost the UK government several hundred million pounds. Other governments are also in a similar position: the US ordered 251 million doses of the vaccine, and France and Germany are aiming to cut back on their orders considerably. To say that the case for the pandemic has been over-estimated appears to be an understatement. Now, the WHO has announced that it is to investigate whether or not it bowed to pressure from drugs companies to overplay the threat." (Continues, below.)
"The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has also announced an investigation into the matter after a resolution [pdf] from Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, was adopted. Dr. Wodarg labelled swine flu as a "false pandemic", and claims in the resolution that '"in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently-tested vaccines."' By some estimates, GSK was expected to net over £1 billion from vaccine sales."
This made my day (Score:2, Interesting)
Even if it blew a lot of government money. We were hit and hit hard by astroturfing and government fear mongering. Now that this information is becoming public this will become an annual event because government can never admit it was wrong.
Shifting the blame? (Score:1, Interesting)
Great way of shifting the blame. I mean it's pretty obvious that companies like GSK have an incentive for overplaying the threat. BUT institutions like the WHO must also justify their existence all the time thus having a similiar incentive, too. It is not just big pharma that is guilty in this case. Since the WHO (IMHO) overplayed the avian flu I've been taking their announcements with a grain of salt.
I actually like swine flu (Score:5, Interesting)
When I read a rumor that mostly fat people were dying from swine flu, it gave me the motivation to lose weight. I went from obese to normal weight in nine months. Now I feel stronger because I am not carrying around 50 pounds of ballast.
That's the only good thing that has come of the media scare about swine flu.
Re:This made my day (Score:3, Interesting)
"Now that this information is becoming public this will become an annual event because government can never admit it was wrong."
They don't have to admit they are wrong. All they have to do is find out which one of these companies actually released the virus in the wilds of Mexico.
It is against the law to profit from your crimes in this country.
Better safe than sorry (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:no shit sherlock (Score:5, Interesting)
Common cold is also a pandemic.
If you really wanted to make your case, you should have mentioned the H1N1 flu virus is a combination of influenza strains that is very uncommon in humans, and for which most people have not been exposed before, hence the high risk of getting sick and passing the virus on. That, in combination with the possibilty of the virus mutating in something more lethal, might have become a real issue. The fact that H1N1 has spread worldwide is no surprise at all now that global travel is so common, but that alone really is not enough to warrant the total mass-hysteria that we've seen now.
Anyway, even taking into account the worst possible scenario (the H1N1 virus spreads like fire, mutates, and starts killing 10% of infected people) does not justify blindly buying millions of vaccins that were made based on the non-lethal initial H1N1 virus strain. Chances are high the current vaccin has no effect on a mutated H1N1 strain at all. So either way, something wrong is going on here.
Also, imagine how many people could have been saved using $0.50 cholera medicine, if we, the cocky, egotastic western world, wouldn't have overreacted on this disease that might even kill people in developed countries, and spent the hundreds of millions of dollars on cheap medicine for actual acute health risks around the world.
Re:Hello, think a little! (Score:2, Interesting)
If it was a credible threat, I would agree with your analysis....However, it was not: The WHO has been issuing warning every last six years with the regularity of a swiss clock, globally, monopolizing media attention for weeks, without the fear materializing even once. This last one is probably the one too much, as it has cost a lot of money to governments in a period where it is scarce, and having a lot of unused vaccines is very bad PR.
It is clear that WHO have incentives to scaremonger continuously, it justify its own existence and can not hurt its budget allocation. However, they also continously become less and less relevant each time they shout "Wolf!". Their utility as a early warning system is thus already compromised, and I wonder if it is still worth it, and budget allocation has to be reviewed....
Now, rightfully, some investigations will occur to check if they are other incentive in the WHO alarmism, in form of accointance with vaccine producers. If it is the case, WHO higher staff has to be fired, the whole stuff reorganised, so that it regain some legitimity and start fresh without the accumulated industry/media links that kill any chance of objectivism and promote bribery...
Re:This made my day (Score:4, Interesting)
Well the WHO deserve a massive amount of blame themselves.
In fact, I'd put them at the core of it. It was after all Margaret Chan, the WHO's director general that came out with the quote, which was clearly idiotic even at the time of "After all it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.".
I mean seriously, what a load of crap. Not every pandemic comes close to putting the whole of humanity under threat, and it was pretty obvious well before she made this comment that swine flu was not deadly enough to be linked to such an absurd claim.
Mexico lost many people to it initially, and as soon as someone died from it in the US, the media went into a frenzy because it's not like of course anyone has ever died from influenza before. After the initial large death toll in Mexico. There was at no point through the spread of swine flu to the present day where the ratio of infected to death was anything worse than a typical bad flu season, since initially being at the typical bad flu season it has actually decreased, to be one of the least harmful annual flus we've had. The amount of healthy people that died to it was negligible, the deaths were almost entirely amongst those already old or weak.
Swine flu never was a threat, it was an outright scam, and the WHO were one of the major players in that scam. I would even argue their involvement was knowing and intentional- how can someone in such a prominent position as Margaret Chan not spot what anyone sensible and down to earth could? That Swine flu just wasn't doing anything serious. She's either grossly incompetent, or intentionally deceptive, either way, she's entirely unfit for the post. She needs to be sacked and replaced by someone who can actually treat such situations with an air of common sense and objectivity, and who can look at the facts before trying to rate the likes of swine flu as something that could whipe out the whole of humanity.
Re:Oh, I see (Score:3, Interesting)
The vaccine rush was started in the USA, where these companies are based. The US gov't was fearmongering every other day, far more often than any announcements or data from the WTO. Don't kid yourself, this scare was purchased by big pharma.
Re:Fear-fad (Score:1, Interesting)
Did these stats include the massive profits that various pharmaceutical companies were raking in for selling a basically-untested "vaccine"?
Re:This made my day (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This made my day (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This made my day (Score:2, Interesting)
Vaccinations are worthwhile. It could've been much worse without the scaremongering.
It's just like any other technical work. When you screw up, everyone hears about it. When you do everything right, everyone asks "What the fuck are we paying you for if we never have any problems?" Nothing bad happened because we reacted strongly and quickly.
Re:Shouldn't we be happy? (Score:3, Interesting)
A flu that will kill millions of people is going to happen sooner or later.
Why do you believe that? What evidence is there that such a thing will happen?
This is the third flu pandemic since 1920. The one in 1957-1958 killed between one and four million. The one in 1968-1969 killed around 1 million wordwide. This current pandemic (which appears to be over) is estimated to have killed just under 500,000. Notice a pattern here?
The 1918-1920 flu pandemic is always pointed to as an example of what could happen. However, that pandemic occured during World War I (which led to people being moved around the world more rapidly and to a greater extent than ever before) but before the advent of modern medicine (which I would argue began with the development of sulfa drugs in the 1930s).
Re:This made my day (Score:2, Interesting)
Thats what they where saying on the news (that it killed healthy people more).
Now I want the numbers. Its almost over, so start compiling.
Give us the statistics and all the numbers on actual cases and profile of those to whom it was fatal.
I dont buy it.
Re:Fear-fad (Score:3, Interesting)
But you're not providing enough information for it to be relevant. If the normal flue kills 0.00001% of younger healthy people, and this new flu doubles the chance of a younger healthy person to die, it's still doesn't matter because it's not significant.
Show me some numbers, then start making claims. As of yet all I've heard is scare mongering.
The numbers from the initial outbreak reports were one in six. So for a country the size of the US, you could expect 1/3 to catch the flu and 1/6 of those to die - or around 16 million. That's a pretty scary number.
Of course, the early numbers turned out to be wrong. But that took a couple of months to figure out. It still turned out to have a relatively high mortality rate for flu.