The Great Flu Scare

A brief outline of a media pandemic: how the World Health Organization, journalists, politicians and scientific “experts” manipulate public opinion.

The attack on the global public came concentrated and well aimed, like a boxer’s clenched fist. Germany was hit on April 24. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported it this way: “Sixty people have already died from a flu strain that mutated from swine to human beings.” In the United States, it reported, at least seven people were ill with the disease. “We are very, very concerned,” said Thomas Abraham, a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO). Wait! If WHO is “very, very concerned,” it smells like a really big story to the media.

So FAZ devotes itself to telling all the known details: WHO fixes the number of swine flu deaths in Mexico at 57 and the Mexican government says 60 others are under investigation. Later reports put the actual number of fatalities caused by the new flu virus at 16. They couldn’t agree on that either, and a few days later WHO sheepishly released yet different numbers. But it was enough to ensure a place in history for the “media flu pandemic of 2009.”

That same day, FAZ further reported that chaos had broken out in Mexico: emergency government meetings, public health warnings to the public to avoid visiting hospitals, school closings. Television reports carried stark pictures of a Mexican populace in panic, everyone wearing surgical masks. What had taken place there? We still don’t know to this day. Even CNN was unable to get any information about the early cases from Mexican officials, information such as the victims’ socio-economic status, or information concerning concentrations in specific geographic areas or in certain hospitals. Mexico City is a metropolis of 20 million inhabitants.

But that didn’t bother the media. After the initial shock, details about the apparently super-dangerous virus were already released the next day. Not by Mexico but by the United States. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta decoded and identified the new virus: it was made up of two swine flu viruses (one American, one European) with a dash of bird flu and a pinch of human flu thrown in. It was brand new and was tagged H1N1. Of course nobody knew what this gobbledygook meant and everyone demanded clarification. And clarification came within a few days from many different experts. H1N1 – it was something akin to the “Spanish flu” that WHO had been expecting for years and which they used to justify maintaining Pandemic Warning Level 3 the whole time. O.K., it wasn’t the expected bird flu, it was a swine flu. But the pandemic alarm level would remain unchanged, come hell or high water.

While the number of fatalities from the virus rose to 103 (according to FAZ) someone (presumably from WHO) made another horrifying report to the media: the principle victims of the virus were mostly young and healthy. That was simply a lie. At the time that story was released, the number of actual documented deaths due to swine flu in Mexico stood at just seven. With that small a sample, absolutely nothing can be extrapolated about victims’ ages and how healthy they were.

But the media had done its duty. Since the media hype about bird flu and the popularity of stories about Spanish flu that killed millions between 1918 and 1920, anyone interested had learned that this new flu killed mainly young, healthy people. The pandemic hysteria grew and was being stoked up hotter everywhere.

In comparison with FAZ for example, Jörg Hacker, the chief of the Robert Koch Institute reported that the virus spread “extremely rapidly” and “possessed all the properties to spread across the globe.” Wrong. What Mr. Hacker should have said was that people are capable of spreading the virus in many different ways, just like any other vacation illness.

Microbiologist Alexander Kekulé turned it all up another notch when he said in a Tagesspiegel interview, “the new virus has particularly vicious symptoms and will be the cause of many fatalities.” Whereupon FAZ summed it up by saying that the parallels between the Spanish flu and this latest version “appeared obvious.”

Tamiflu to the rescue

But there was hope: Tamiflu. You can scarcely find one newspaper article or one television report these days that doesn’t sing its praises to the heavens. Nobody bothered to check if that was the case, however. But the appearance was good enough because pictures of the previously ill began to appear. They had been cured. Considering the “vicious symptoms” described by Kekulé, a miracle was the only possible answer: Tamiflu. All the cases of illness in which the victims got well on their own (presumably most of them) were separated out. Now there was no doubt about Tamiflu. The giant Roche-Glaxo company could rub its hands in anticipation of new contracts from governments everywhere.

On April 28, Reuters Television reported 149 Mexican fatalities. One day later, they had to amend that by saying “Fatalities in Mexico increase, according to the government.” Under that heading, the Mexican Minister of Health was quoted as saying “as many as 149” but the number “known with absolute certainty” was 26. Twenty-six? “Increasing numbers?”

But even the figure 26 later proved to be fake. WHO held a press conference on the evening of April 28th where they announced they were raising the warning level to 4. When someone asked an innocent question about the number of fatalities to date, Deputy General Secretary Keiji Fukuda suddenly lowered his voice to a near-whisper. There had been no more than seven confirmed fatalities in Mexico he admitted meekly.

That sensational news didn’t even deserve a headline in the following day’s FAZ. In the midst of a long article entitled “the virus remains dangerous” one found the hidden news that there had “already been seven fatalities due to the virus.” Their use of “already” was a real journalistic gem.

That same day, German Minister of Health Ulla Schmidt issued a warning against traveling to Mexico and promised Germans that in the case of a pandemic, everyone would be inoculated twice. Using what? WHO calculates it will be at least six months before an effective vaccine is developed. Then the vaccine has to be manufactured. What does Frau Schmidt care? To ensure the average German doesn’t lose any sleep, they trot out the experts again who tell us that Germany would only need a few months at most to be ready. But that overlooks one small detail: while WHO did raise the alarm level, they declined to stop production of the old flu vaccine in order to produce the new. Apparently, WHO concluded that despite all the hype and public hysteria, the normal old winter flu was more dangerous than the new strain.

The media pandemic began to lose steam. First, broadcasters and newspapers began openly wondering whether what they had been reporting was as bad as all that. The subject wasn’t even mentioned for an entire day by Spiegel Online. But you can always depend on WHO: on the 30th of April, they raised the alarm level yet again to the next-to-highest level on their pandemic scale. No matter that this was based solely on a bureaucratic response to the fact that the first harmless cases had started appearing in other countries. WHO trumpeted that the world was facing the global spread of H1N1. That added plenty of cause for new assumptions and demands for Tamiflu. The European Union Center for Epidemics looked into their crystal ball and assured us that 25 to 35 percent of Europeans could be infected. But they could also reassure us that of those infected, fully one out of three would be free of any symptoms.

One-third with no symptoms

So that’s how dangerous the successor to Spanish flu is? One-third of those infected would be completely symptom-free? And the reality could be even more harmless. The first reports that swine flu was probably no more serious than regular winter flu (and possibly far less dangerous) came from the United States. All the hackers and the Kekulés or whatever they call themselves did an immediate about face. And on the 2nd of May, even FAZ had to report that the outbreak “wasn’t dramatic” and that all European cases would likely be mild. Still, there were over 500 cases confirmed worldwide and that number has now become the last straw within the media’s grasp. It’s growing. Every day. Tuesday, according to WHO, it stood at 1,125 in 21 countries. Another sleight-of-hand trick because nobody says how many of those 1,125 have already recovered and are back on the job again.

Oh, wait . . . the panicking pandemic crowd still has one straw left: the virus only has to mutate and we’ll all be dead by autumn. That’s the way it was with bird flu, too.