By Darrel Crain, D.C.
Just when the flu “formerly known as swine” was losing its headline luster for being too mild and ordinary a bug, the first global influenza pandemic in 41 years was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO). On June 11, 2009 the WHO raised the pandemic warning to level 6, the highest possible alert.
Officials point out that this classification refers only to the geographic spread of the new flu over the globe, and tells nothing of its virulence or deadliness. Nevertheless, the heightened alert will likely rekindle the flames of “pandemania” in the U.S., sending multitudes of panicky parents to already overcrowded emergency rooms with feverish, sniffling children.
Hysteria in the realm of public health is highly disruptive to normal health services, not to mention unnecessary and costly. Intentionally or not, health leaders the world over create panic with their pronouncements. What about educating the public rather than raising a ruckus? Wouldn’t that help us all maintain our health (and sanity) and prepare us to respond rationally to future epidemics of flu–and fear?
Scary predictions tossed about by health leaders and incessantly repeated by the media are responsible for the public’s perception of health risks. The avian flu (remember the avian bird flu?) was predicted to become the next global pandemic, “It’s not a question of IF the avian flu pandemic is coming, but WHEN!” Such dire predictions were based, in part, on a high rate of death of those who became infected with avian flu, particularly in Vietnam. The death rate in Asia was reported to be as high as 70 percent.
A death rate, of course, is simply a ratio. In other words, it’s a comparison of the number of people who are infected to the number who actually die from the infection. But a couple of years after the outbreak a report was published in the medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine, suggesting that the death rate attributed to avian flu is severely overblown.
In the midst of the avian flu scare a group of Swedish researchers traveled to Vietnam to conduct the study and were surprised with what they found. The scientists concluded that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people in Asia are infected with avian flu each year, not just the few hundred individuals sick enough to wind up in a hospital. The vast majority of the population infected with avian flu seems to experience only a mild, self-limiting illness, indistinguishable from the symptoms of seasonal flu. (Hmm, sound familiar, kind of like the experience of most U.S. citizens infected with the new pig/bird/human flu?)
Public health officials at the WHO and elsewhere have yet to acknowledge the likelihood that enormous numbers of people become infected with avian flu every year and recover without incident. The scary death rate from avian flu would likely plummet spectacularly if health leaders would examine and confirm the evidence suggesting that avian flu is widespread and ordinary.
The WHO has reported 145 deaths associated with a (H1N1) flu worldwide so far, as of this writing, but to an American public accustomed to annual flu shot campaigns howling about the deaths of 36,000 Americans each year from seasonal flu, the swine flu, officially renamed H1N1, sounds entirely flimsy and feeble.
If we do the math, a death toll of 36,000 per year from run-of-the-mill seasonal flu means an average of 690 deaths per week. In the past 6 weeks a total of 45 deaths have been attributed to the A(H1N1) flu in the U.S., or about 8 deaths per week. That means the ordinary flu is about 8,650 percent more deadly than the new flu, based on official numbers. So why all the fuss and feathers?
Part of the confusion stems from comparing confirmed numbers to estimated numbers. In the current outbreak, the WHO has been releasing only laboratory confirmed numbers of A(H1N1) flu cases. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates numbers of seasonal flu cases and deaths based on “statistical modeling.”
To make matters even more confusing, the CDC stubbornly persists in lumping together statistics for influenza-related illness and death with that of pneumonia-related illness and death. Note to CDC: pneumonia and flu are not the same thing, nor do they always occur together.
In the initial stages of reporting on A(H1N1) flu, the CDC released numbers of confirmed cases only, but the limited capacity of laboratories in the U.S. to test for the new virus was quickly overwhelmed by hordes of Americans fearful they were infected. Eventually it was announced by officials that laboratory confirmation was no longer necessary for the new flu and we returned to estimates: “Probably 100,000 Americans have the A(H1N1) flu.” Probably, maybe, we think so, nobody knows for certain.
The official response here in the U.S. to the novel A(H1N1) strain of influenza has been threefold: First, scare the bejeebers out of the public, second, distribute government stockpiles of “antiviral” drugs, and third, make a new vaccine. How has this been working so far?
Public health officials started off by pushing the public panic button with chilling predictions and worst case scenarios that were amplified and echoed by the media, always happy to hype the latest sensation. But supposing the A(H1N1) virus had turned out to be a deadly pathogen, is the creation of a state of fearful hysteria about new and unknown health risks helpful to anyone at all?
Officials were also quick to begin distributing expensive government stockpiles of so-called antiviral drugs as the best defense against the new flu. What do we know about how well these drugs fight viruses? First, most viruses become resistant to the drugs in a very short time. Second, when these antivirals do “work,” it means slightly diminished symptoms of flu, or the shaving of less than 24 hours off the length of time symptoms are suffered.
What about the safety of antivirals? The potential adverse reactions to Tamiflu, in particular, are significant. In Japan the drug has been banned for use by teenagers for being linked to increased suicidal behavior. Tamiflu’s own safety information states: “People with the flu, particularly children and adolescents, may be at an increased risk of self-injury and confusion shortly after taking Tamiflu and should be closely monitored.” Are the limited benefits of taking these drugs outweighed by much greater risks?
And then there’s the flu vaccine. Congress and President Obama have launched a new round of giving lots of money to drug companies to make new vaccines against the virus. European countries are also ordering huge quantities of vaccines intended to fight the new flu. But what does the medical literature tell us about how well influenza vaccines save lives and reduce the incidence of influenza in the age groups for whom shots are recommended?
Independent reviews of published medical research from around the world pertaining to flu shots are periodically undertaken by the Cochrane Collaboration, which uniquely does not accept government or industry money for its research.
In one review the Cochrane group looked at 51 studies involving 260,000 children: “No evidence that injecting children 6-23 months of age with flu vaccines is any more effective than a placebo.” In another Cochrane review of 25 studies involving more than 60,000 healthy adults: “Universal immunization of healthy adults was not supported by this review.” The Cochrane group also looked at 64 studies involving the elderly: “The runaway 100 percent effectiveness touted by proponents [of the flu shot] for the elderly was nowhere to be seen. What you see is that marketing rules the response to influenza, and scientific evidence comes fourth or fifth.”
We now face the possibility that public health authorities will attempt to mandate three flu shots beginning later this year, one for the predicted strains of seasonal flu and two for A(H1N1) flu. Will the federal government exercise its emergency pandemic authority and force every man woman and child (without exception) to be injected with new, untested flu vaccines currently being rushed into production to fight the new flu? Stay tuned.
The public needs to be reassured that the few deaths associated with the A(H1N1) flu in the U.S. involve individuals already suffering underlying health conditions. This pattern of who dies following influenza infection would be the same if the media began tracking confirmed cases of seasonal flu: influenza may be dangerous for persons with a weak or compromised immune system, but historically, to the average well-nourished person, influenza viruses pose little mortal risk. The same cannot be said of certain vaccine ingredients, such as mercury and aluminum phosphate, which are inherently harmful to human health at any dose.
Fear of the flu and confidence that antiviral drugs and additional vaccines will protect us from influenza is rooted in an unsophisticated and antiquated belief in the germ theory of disease. The man known as the father of pathology, Dr. Rudolf Virchow, near the end of his life more than one hundred years ago, tried to correct this one-dimensional thinking. Louis Pasteur himself, the man largely credited with developing the germ theory, is reported to have said on his deathbed, “The microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything.”
By terrain, Pasteur meant the health of the human host. At the end of his life he understood that neither viruses nor bacteria just come along and make people sick, rather, microbes infect those people who are already weakened. If germs were the cause of disease, it would follow that mosquitoes cause swamps or that rats cause garbage dumps. Mosquitoes and rats only show up and move in with their families when conditions permit; the same is true of viruses and bacteria.
Lost in all the pandemic hysteria is the truly important news: positive, noninvasive, health-building steps are well within the reach of even the most modest household budget, steps that can actually help us all avoid influenza infection. Namely, we need to exercise some common sense. Stop worrying, get outdoors and exercise, get plenty of rest, eat a healthy and diverse diet of wholesome foods free of chemical contaminants, drink plenty of pure water, and supplement with high quality vitamins D, A, E and C.
Independent research reproduced the world over tells us that these measures are safe and remarkably effective. Is it too much to hope that official pronouncements about facing the flu, old and new, will someday inform the public how to build up health rather than screech about how the sky is falling? Or that the sky could theoretically begin falling if the clouds were to suddenly mutate (which they show no signs of doing) and become highly dangerous instead of highly humdrum?
To paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear is the fear of flu itself.”
planetc1.com-news @ 1:54 pm | Article ID: 1246308873
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