Topic
Hard-hit nations have vital stories to tell, but most Canadian reporting is local and sporadic.
H5N1 is going global, so should coverage.
Only 40 per cent of BC health workers get flu vaccines, and many refuse.
The blogosphere erupts with a topic gone viral.
For four years I've been part of "Flublogia" -- an online community that has tracked H5N1 and fretted about a pandemic that might never come. By early this spring, the bird-flu news seemed to be drying up.
Indonesia was no longer reporting human H5N1 cases to the World Health Organization. Vietnam and China seemed to have the problem under control. Egypt reported a steady trickle of human H5N1, but there too we saw no sign of a mutation that might let the virus spread from human to human.
We flubies were using various search tools to find stories: Google Health and NewsNow were two key sources for news in English, but some of us were using computer translation to learn what was going on in the media and governments of the "hot-zone" countries. We never had enough information, but we drew from a worldwide network.
Then, in late April, H1N1 caught Flublogia completely by surprise. We had expected bird flu; we got another strain altogether, a weird hybrid of bird, swine, and human viruses. We had expected the outbreak to start in Java or Vietnam or China; instead it appeared almost simultaneously in the U.S. and Mexico. And it seemed to be killing an alarming number of relatively young persons, just as Spanish flu did 90 years ago.
The media, governments and health agencies seemed equally surprised. In the initial confusion, I saw my daily traffic -- which had been running around 300-500 visits a day -- spike to 8,200 on one day in late April.
Evidently, people weren't getting enough news from their local media, and had turned to blogs to learn more. But I was beginning to worry about the media coverage -- especially in North America and Britain.
Going for the local angle
That coverage was profoundly parochial. If all politics is local, so too, it seems, is all disease reporting. Local papers jumped on every local case with no more than cursory attention to the larger story.
And that was a very large story. Countries like China and Korea imposed draconian quarantine measures on incoming foreigners. But North American media again went for the "local" angle: our kids are stuck in a Chinese hotel instead of taking the courses they went there for.
I began to sense an irony: Google's global reach was bringing us mostly local stories from North America and Britain. While H1N1 staggered the Mexican economy and shut down a capital city of over 20 million people, Google linked to hundreds of stories about the inconvenience imposed on American and Canadian vacationers.
I already used Google Alerts about flu stories just posted. Now I went to Google.mx and created "alertas" for Spanish-language reports. Then I dusted off my very rusty Spanish and offered translated excerpts from those reports. Mexico's media were worried about a lot more than North American turistas: mothers dying in childbirth, scores of thousands thrown out of work, hospitals struggling to cope.
Tracking bird flu, I'd learned that hot-zone countries often gave their local media more freedom to report H5N1 outbreaks than they gave their English-language media. You needed to translate from Bahasa Indonesia or Vietnamese to find out the real story.
Now that H1N1 is widespread in the old bird-flu hot-zone countries, English-language coverage is superficially better. For example, Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, has built a fine English-language portal for worldwide swine-flu stories.
No deaths in China?
Yet Xinhua's reports are almost always just body counts: how many people are reported ill in one country or another. (For decades, Chinese media have been happy to report on disasters outside China.) And while Xinhua's reported over 9,000 H1N1 cases in China itself as of mid-September, it still claims no one has died from the disease. Hong Kong, meanwhile, has reported over twice as many cases and 13 deaths.
(Currently, it appears China is actively blocking my site -- and my other blogs as well. And all I've done is express surprise, not disbelief, at the lack of deaths.)
As winter reached Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, H1N1 hit them hard. Google Alerts gave me a good sense of English-speaking H1N1 coverage, and I saw that North American and British media were following the Aussies and Kiwis -- but totally ignoring Latin America.
They were ignoring a big story. Argentina, Brazil and Chile have suffered through a bitter winter of outbreaks and deaths, with school closures and overwhelmed hospitals.
I was now translating from Portuguese as well: H1N1 was moving from Brazil's temperate southern states of Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo to the Atlantic seaboard and then into the Amazon. By mid-September, over 800 Brazilians had died of swine flu in four months.
Lessons deliberately ignored
Since a full-blown winter outbreak is likely to hit us, you would think our media would have covered the southern hemisphere in search of what we'd soon be facing. Very little of that happened. Perhaps some medical professionals and organizations like WHO were learning from South America and Australia, but the lessons weren't getting out to the larger public.
So parochialism was keeping our media from fully informing us. No doubt it was not just the media's fault; they give us what we want to know, and we've made it clear we don't want to know about the non-anglophone parts of the world.
But it's striking to see how much the non-anglophones want to know about us. Argentine, Mexican and Brazilian news sites have been full of reports about Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Patrick Swayze and Ben Bernanke, not to mention our own experiences with H1N1. Latin America's media implied a better-informed, less self-absorbed audience than we are.
A few successes
This doesn't mean our media are total failures in covering H1N1. Canadian media have done remarkably well. Helen Branswell of The Canadian Press is respected throughout Flublogia as the best medical reporter anywhere. Caroline Alphonso and Andre Picard of The Globe and Mail are doing brilliant work (albeit usually on the Canadian scene). Individual newspapers, whether the New York Times or the Winnipeg Free Press, can do reliable reporting despite the financial woes of the newspaper business.
And we don't have the problem of outright political interference in flu coverage that some overseas media contend with -- notably in Indonesia and China, and probably in Egypt and Iran.
Relying on spin doctors
Still, our media have lacked much incentive to cover what is literally a global story. Few western reporters have the skills and backing to cover flu in Asia and the Middle East, so our media have had to rely on local sources in English like Xinhua and Fars. These are of course very competent spin mills, putting the best face possible on their health problems.
Other spinmasters are trying to exploit the public's patchy awareness of H1N1. The "vaccine safety concern community" is lobbying hard against inoculating the public against swine flu when the vaccine becomes available in the next month or two.
The paranoids and conspiracists see the pandemic as a trumped-up excuse for President Obama to declare martial law and turn the U.S. into a socialist tyranny. The anti-medical folks are swapping "natural" remedies for H1N1.
These groups are exploiting the online medium at least as well as most of the mainstream media and medical organizations. They're spreading what looks like outright nonsense (or at least personal axe-grinding). Some people are buying it, just as some people fall for Nigerian money-transfer scams.
Flu bloggers, caught in this whirlwind of information and malarkey, are trying to interpret flu news rationally. We rely on the mainstream media, both local and foreign, for most of our information. Governments and health agencies provide the rest. While a few of us are medical experts, most of us simply have to find sources we feel we can trust. Even then we have to be cautious about what they tell us. After all, H1N1 surprised epidemiologists just as the collapse on Wall Street surprised the economists last year.
We're extremely lucky, though, that this long-awaited pandemic has been relatively mild so far. It's enabled us to run a dress rehearsal for an all-out 1918-style disaster, to see where our plans hold up and where they don't.
When the next big pandemic comes along, I hope our media will have learned how to cover it better than they've covered this one. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
14
Login or register to post comments
Name
3 years ago
Meanwhile...
...those of us who have stumbled on your blog and discovered there's a whole world of unreported information happening out there will continue to rely on you to better brace ourselves for what's ahead!
Thanks for the great work you do. It's worrying to see the widespread apathy over the expected return of H1N1 all around us as we learn this morning of outbreaks already starting in a remote First Nations community near Tofino.
It's going to be a very traumatic wake-up call for many British Columbians when we see our first reports of a beautiful child or pregnant mom's untimely death splashed over the evening TV news.
silvervalley
3 years ago
Media blew or blowing up flu scare?
Or should it even be implied that you cannot always swallow every word in the mainstream media as gospel?
Be that as it may, I did read in the Windsor Star that Canada plans to vaccinate the entire population, although perhaps not as yet mandatory. Massachusetts has just passed some pretty draconian legislation, which could require forced vaccination, quarantine, $1,000 a day fines and/or jail.
Even simply reading official statements and mainstream media, it seems there are reasonable reasons for some concern--at least enough to make some effort to educate oneself on the topic.
It does appear as if these vaccines, whatever their efficacy and risks, are being rushed into production, and there is legislation that indemnifies the pharmaceutical companies, who stand to make billions, against any lawsuits for adverse reactions.
Some opinions which seem to show cause for concern appear on the site of Canadian economics professor Michel Chossudovsky (www.GlobalResearch.ca).
Another web page, which appears pretty balanced, with a video from the mainstream media, and one from a woman suggesting finding out more about it is at: http://www.sixwise.com/Newsletters/2009/August/12/The-Swine-Flu-Vaccine.htm
... the World Health Organization ... continues to state that the overall severity of the pandemic is moderate...:
Most people recover from infection without the need for hospitalization or medical care.
... national levels of severe illness from influenza A(H1N1) appear similar to levels seen during local seasonal influenza periods...
The vaccine ... will have only been tested for one to three weeks on a few hundred children and adults before being released.
... most doses of this experimental vaccine will contain ... the mercury-based preservative ... associated with brain and immune system dysfunction, including autism.
... you and your family are subject to federal and state public health laws that contain ... 'provisions for isolation, quarantine and vaccination of citizens, [which] may or may not be enforced by government officials during a declared public health emergency ...'
... Congress took away liability for experimental drugs and vaccines that are released for public use under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
In 1976 ... several hundred people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome ... At least 30 people also died … not from the swine flu, but from the vaccine.
This incident from the past raises major questions and concerns about launching a similar vaccine program today.
mopled
3 years ago
The danger is the vaccine and the police state.
Vancouver, BC - The Vaccine Resistance Movement in Canada is pleased to announce the second Global Informational Demonstration and Political Protest, September 25th, 26th and 27th, 2009 and we need EVERYBODY who shares our concerns to get involved, to inform others about H1N1 and vaccines, to speak out, and to protest the vaccine agenda. October is fast approaching and with it an uncertain future for our children. Will their schools will turned into forced vaccination centres? Will parents be caught in the middle? We need good people in every city and town to take part and begin to give our governments, various health agencies, the WHO, as well as Big Pharma, a loud and clear message:
"WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT!"
To this end, our activist tool kit is fully supplied with REAL solutions including printable signs that you can download (free) to help inform and / or protest. We hope to see more of you in attendance this time across Canada & around the world as the stakes couldn't be higher. Please click here or scroll down the page on FalseFlagFlu.com to the "Activist Tools" section.
Vancouver, BC will be making a big effort to reach out to the community. We'll have a jam packed event, with great keynote speakers including Candace Hill, Kevin Annett, John Hammell, Dr.Chris Shaw (confirmation pending), Sue Kelly (still pending), Joel Lord, Wayne Prante, Rukshana Engineer, Reg Argue & other brave activists raising the bar on these crucial issues. We will also have a never before vaccinated teenager joining us to share his outlook. So do come out everyone and make a difference!
Date: Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Location: Vancouver Art Gallery, south side steps facing Robson Street, 3pm - 6pm
http://www.falseflagflu.com/NGTI.html
snert
3 years ago
"WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT!"
You don't have to unless maybe your job requires it as in health care workers.
As long as a significant portion of the population takes steps to prevent catching and spreading diseases your ilk can walk among them with little fear.
Just don't complain when your kids die because they caught the flu off someone who hadn't been vaccinated..
mopled
3 years ago
Health Care Workers refusing shots.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082503251.html
Medical Workers Leery of Flu Vaccine
New research suggests that half of all health-care workers around the world would refuse the swine flu vaccine, a British scientific journal reported Wednesday, 8/26/09
The conclusion is taken from a study of more than 2,200 health workers this year in Hong Kong, during the height of global H1N1 flu panic in May. Experts said the trend would likely apply worldwide.
Most of those polled said they would pass on the flu shot because they were afraid of side effects and doubted how safe and effective it would be.
“BILL C-6 and MANDATORY VACCINES” (pdf) http://www.falseflagflu.com/docs/BILL C-6 and MANDATORY VACCINES by D. Nicholson.pdf
National Communication Director, Freedom in Canadian Health Care. Most media will not reveal the crucial understandings you will need for yourself and your family. These are contained in this speech and will help you maintain your Rights and Freedoms after this September 2009.
mary jane
3 years ago
distractions
this is another distarction so they gordo or harpo can pull some scam on the people.
What is truly sad is the fact it shows that poverty has a direct impact on those who suffer from it. It will also show that everyone needs to have good / proper food to prevent the spread of health problems
ME2
3 years ago
just wondeing
I wonder if the billions to be spent on flu vaccines would save more lives if spent in other ways.
Intention Pure
3 years ago
Mass pychological terror
This H1N1virus was manufactured in a laboratory setting (CDC labs controlled mainly by BUSH and CHENEY) and is being used as a biological "non-lethal" warfare on the world population (via the WHO: see Len Horowitz and his report on Mexican flu). It is also a cash cow for the insidiously evil megapharmacuetical corporations who pray on the public and continuously try to mystify and make illegal what natural elemental, plant, and animal products really make and keep us healthy (Bill C-51, C-15, C-6) (Big pharma does this both as a depopulation technique and a profit making mechanism rolled into one).These insidious corporations have a legal mandate for profit, take no social responsibility, and legislate (through fascist control of current government) corporate greed without a conscience. It may also have a number of other functions. Thank you to writers "mopled" and "silvervalley".
The "war on terror" perpetrated by the United States is a figment of the oligarchs' collective imagination and is a tool to control the masses by slowly (and under false pretenses) removing the public trust doctrine and replacing it with a fear and shock doctrine, under which duress the populace will "say anything you want me to" and accept the false premise (fear) that leads to us trading our freedom for "security". Terror is actually a state of being (emotion); it is not a noun. They don't say "war on terrorists or terrorism". Are they waging a war on our state of being? I, with millions of other people, am NOT falling for it.
The real issues of the day are water and food supply for the masses, and the powers that be will do anything to distract us from this. The crux of water and food issues, in our communities, rely on us protecting our environment and our ecology so that we can reconnect with it in a respectful and empowering way and it will be intact when we turn to her for survival as this is the only real source of nourishment in this world (Mother Nature).
Intention Pure
3 years ago
new link to Bill C-6
See Bill C-6 about mandatory vaccination and how close this is to becoming law in Canada.
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=135042.new
silvervalley
3 years ago
RFID bracelets for vaccination trial in Boston
News item of relevance:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/11/21/boston_launches_flu_shot_tracking/
Using technology originally developed for mass disasters ... embarking on a novel experiment ... creating a citywide registry of everyone who has had a flu vaccination.
... several hundred people .... will get a bracelet printed with a unique identifier code. Information about the vaccine's recipients, and the shot, will be entered into handheld devices ....
... useful if something more sinister strikes: a bioterrorism attack or the long-feared arrival of a global flu epidemic.... to track who received a special vaccine ...
"... pinpoint who's vaccinated ... absolutely vital," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at the University of Minnesota...."
... "If we can make it work in the Boston Marathon medical tent ... it can work in other environments ... a community clinic or a doctor's office..." said Rich Serino, chief of Boston Emergency Medical Services....
... said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, top disease doctor at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. "... if you're tracking multiple clinics in real time, you can see where the uptake is better ... then focus on outreach."
... people ... will get an ID bracelet with a barcode... name, age, gender, address - will be entered into the patient tracking database... of who gave the vaccine ... into the right arm or the left, and time-stamped ....
... said Jun Davantes, ... at EMSystems, the company that makes the technology, "Boston will be able to identify where there are certain bottlenecks ... improve it the next time around."
... city health authorities said, they envision creating a network across the city that would allow public and private providers of flu shots to add data to a registry.
... "I have had people say, 'Oh, that's so big brother,' " said Laura Williams, EMS deputy chief .... "But in truth, the unique identifier is unique to the incident. It's not like you will go to the hospital, and they'll say, 'You're the one who got the flu vaccine at 10 o'clock yesterday at the Boston Public Health Commission.' "
Another article with YouTube videos I cannot vouch for, but FYI
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15272
CBC on GPS tracking for seniors:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/09/15/calgary-gps-seniors-tracking-dementia-alzheimer-alberta.html?ref=rss
REAL ID Act:
http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=13577
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act
SicPreFix
3 years ago
Rolling on floor gasping in laughter
re: mopled; Miss aware-beware, and their ilk....
Woah nelly! The lunatic fringe has arrived in full and colourful blossom indeed! Yippe-aye-eh cowdoggies, here come the loopytunes.
Wow. Just wow.
mopled
3 years ago
I can never figure out whether
the gatekeepers who hang out here are self-appointed or.....
The handwriting is on the wall for all to see who will look. It is all out in the open, so one can't even call it a conspiracy.
But....
"Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, are using an adjuvant in their H1N1 vaccines.
The adjuvant? Squalene.
According to Meryl Nass, M.D., an authority on the anthrax vaccine,
“A novel feature of the two H1N1 vaccines being developed by companies Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline is the addition of squalene-containing adjuvants to boost immunogenicity and dramatically reduce the amount of viral antigen needed. This translates to much faster production of desired vaccine quantities.”[v]
Novartis’s proprietary squalene adjuvant for their H1N1 vaccine is MF59. Glaxo’s is ASO3. MF59 has yet to be approved by the FDA for use in any U.S. vaccine, despite its history of use in other countries.
Per Dr. Nass, there are only three vaccines in existence using an approved squalene adjuvant. None of the three are approved for use in the U.S."
******
A study conducted at Tulane Medical School and published in the February 2000 issue of Experimental Molecular Pathology included these stunning statistics:
“ … the substantial majority (95%) of overtly ill deployed Gulf War Syndrome patients had antibodies to squalene. All (100%) GWS patients immunized for service in Desert Shield/Desert Storm who did not deploy, but had the same signs and symptoms as those who did deploy, had antibodies to squalene.
In contrast, none (0%) of the deployed Persian Gulf veterans not showing signs and symptoms of GWS have antibodies to squalene. Neither patients with idiopathic autoimmune disease nor healthy controls had detectable serum antibodies to squalene. The majority of symptomatic GWS patients had serum antibodies to squalene.”[xi]
According to Dr. Viera Scheibner, Ph.D., a former principle research scientist for the government of Australia:
“… this adjuvant [squalene] contributed to the cascade of reactions called "Gulf War Syndrome," documented in the soldiers involved in the Gulf War.
The symptoms they developed included arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, rashes, photosensitive rashes, malar rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, abnormal body hair loss, non-healing skin lesions, aphthous ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuropsychiatric problems, anti-thyroid effects, anaemia, elevated ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate), systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Raynaud’s phenomenon, Sjorgren’s syndrome, chronic diarrhoea, night sweats and low-grade fevers.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/04/Squalene-The-Swine-Flu-Vaccines-Dirty-Little-Secret-Exposed.aspx
Happy Vaccination Day, SicPreFix. I wonder if you will be so mirthful a year later.
Connie Howard
3 years ago
vaccine safety community
The vaccine safety community ought not be lumped together with paranoids and conspiracists, and rather than being guilty of exploitation, many in that community are in fact bringing vital underreported information to the public. Information such as Cochrane Review conclusions that regular flu shots were no more effective than a placebo in children 6 months to 2 years of age, and preventative only 33 percent of the time in school-aged children. In healthy adults, flu vaccines reduced the risk by only six percent, and the number of missed work days by less than a day.
The exploitation, I’m afraid, has happened mostly in the mainstream media. Risk of serious illness with the swine flu is currently no different than that posed by regular flu strains. Analysis of official data indicates that 99.97 percent of those infected will not get seriously ill. And the truth is that we don’t yet have any significant evidence of safety on the new vaccine—trials so far have been small and short-term, and adverse reactions very often come with time.
Regarding the 1918 flu, I’d think that the conditions the virus had a heyday with at the time were quite different than current conditions—I believe it started among soldiers on the squalor of the front, where exhaustion, malnutrition, and enormous stress would have left them immune compromised. They then carried the virus to equally fatigued, malnourished, stressed and grieving communities at home. It’s not surprising it spread like wildfire. Also, flu deaths tend to be the result of secondary infections, for which we had few treatment options at the time.
silvervalley
3 years ago
vaccines contributed to 1918 flu?
Some think so. Without having been there, or having studied the matter extensively it would be hard to say. Does give one pause, however, especially when the example of this pandemic is being used to justify the current flu scare promoted by media and other sources.
Here is an article published 25 years ago, by someone apparently there at the time: http://chetday.com/nobirdfluvaccine.htm
According to this next link, the 1918 flu started in the US army. The article suggests that mild first-wave illness protects against later infection. (There is a lot of detail here, for those really interested in winkling out the truth from masses of information--and probably disinformation, too.):
(CIDRAP is the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.)
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct0208waves-jw.html
A variety of quotes here:
(Interestingly, the 1976 flu scare began with a soldier in Fort Dix. According to one quote, the 1918 flu "...in America, the first outbreak occurred on a military base in Kansas in the vicinity of a pig farm." Suggestive, not that I am suggesting anything!) http://www.naturalhealthnewsarticles.com/flu-vaccines-and-1918-influenza-pandemic-quotes-from-authors/
CDC plans for residential camps (official site):
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/camp.htm
About CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - part of US Department of Health and Human Services www.hhs.gov):
http://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/cio.htm