Swine flu strain is relatively mild… so why the panic?
“…scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza…isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics…’Let’s not lose track of the fact that the normal seasonal influenza is a huge public health problem that kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. alone and hundreds of thousands around the world,’ said Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in Madison.”
Reported in the Los Angelese Times here http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-swine-reality30-2009apr30,0,3606923.story
Meanwhile, we’re being treated to more “Shock horror!” headlines with the announcement that the World Health Organization has warned the virus is spreading worldwide - making it - gasp! - a pandemic.
“Global health authorities warned Wednesday that swine flu was threatening to bloom into a pandemic”, said Associated Press. Given the ease we all move around the planet these days it would be incredible if it didn’t become a pandemic. All the title “pandemic” means is that the virus is going everywhere - pan is from the Greek meaning “all” or everywhere.
Now EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has said the possible pandemic “would not necessarily cause widespread deaths”.
The BBC reports: “She said Europe was well prepared and there was ‘no need to panic’.”
Be paranoid, they ARE out to get us
“The current complementary medicine division between state-registered and voluntary-registered practitioners will be destroyed in three years, when a major public advertising campaign will begin to discredit those on voluntary registers.”
There is no evidence that statutory regulation of ANY kind of health professional improves public safety.
That’s why we’re deeply suspicious about current attempts to “regulate” and “register” CAM practitioners. Regulation has little to do with the safety of the public. Indeed, as we’re seeing with the EU’s continuing attempts to ban nutritional supplements, regulation has nothing to do with evidence, let alone safety. It has more to do safeguarding the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
Now comes an amazing report on a meeting between psychoanalysts - who are also facing increasing regualtion “to protect trhe public” and the HPC - that’s the Health Professions Council, yet another new Regulator currently “regulatring” dietitians, physiotherapists, chiropodists and the like.
In this meeting the HPC reps tell the amazed (I presume) College of Psychoanalysts that the current complementary medicine division between state-registered and voluntary-registered practitioners - which was mentioned in the discussion as being a possible structure for therapists - would be destroyed in three years, when a major public advertising campaign would begin to discredit those on the voluntary register.
Unbelievable, but true. Read the full account at this link - College of Psychoanalysts
