Wasn't it Daffy Duck who used to say, "So, what's all the hubbub, bub? And why isn't any one asking this simple question about the H1N1?
What is all the hubbub?
According to a report from Geneva on September 4th (Reuters), the World Health Organization (WHO) said it has only counted 2,837 deaths worldwide, and that it has not posed as serious a threat as they had feared. The U.N. agency is continuing to monitor the novel strain, but it has not detected the mutation which would signal a turn for the worse.
Ordinary seasonal influenza kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally. From WHO reports, the H1N1 is not all that different than the standard flu, producing only mild symptoms in most people. The only real danger is to those whose immune systems are already compromised with respiratory or cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or infections such as Lyme disease.
Viral Fear Is The Epidemic
Despite these statements, they are continuing to issue dire warnings in the media, such as the one Stephanie Nebehay reported: "The virus could eventually infect 2 billion people or a third of the world's population.
Or the prediction by Dr. Tamman Aloudat, a senior health officer at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: "We do have an emergency on our hands, an emergency of a scale different from what we have seen before in the modern era.
Why are we still being swept away by Viral Fear?
According to a report on RT.com , it seems the tides are starting to turn.
One-third of the nurses in England have refused to take the Swine Flu vaccine. And according to a report in Health Day News, some experts are expressing their trepidation about the U.S. plan to implement a vaccination program of unprecedented scale "600 million doses of an experimental drug that is borne in a solution of mercury (thimerosal).
The internet is swarming with protests about proposed forced vaccinations.
Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the U.S. Institute of Medicine and author of The Epidemic That Never Was, talked about the last time the U.S. backed a pharmaceutical company's vaccination campaign.
In 1976, the government decided to vaccinate 43 million people. Not only did the outbreak never make it out of the barracks at Fort Dix, N.J., where it started and eventually stalled, but many immunized came down with a rare neurodegenerative condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome. Twenty five of those people died.
"There will be no way to be certain [whether the immunizations will be safe] until trails this summer, Dr. Fineberg said.
Alternatives to Unacceptable Risk
According to Elyssa Hart, ND and James Mullane, ND, from Danbury, CT., there have been reports that the H1N1 virus may actually be "immune to Tamiflu, the drug most commonly prescribed by allopathic physicians. They have dedicated their practice to prevention, including boosting the immune systems of their patients with diet, rest, exercise, and Chinese herbs.
The Dean of Research and Education at the Beijing Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Mr. Tu Zhitao, stated, "We have found that Tamiflu is not sufficient".it weakens the body and has adverse effects on body tolerance. This treatment [the herbal combination]"works to build the body's resistance.
America's resistance to building its own resistance is a curiosity to say the least. Why are we more willing to be afraid (very afraid!), to be chronically unhealthy, to be unfit and unhappy than get up and take care of ourselves? Does the cookie aisle in Wal-Mart really have that much power over us that we're willing to take a vaccine that is useless at best and lethal at worst rather than eat right, sleep right, and move a little more?
People "all of us, both healthy and unhealthy, albeit to different degrees "have pathologies and quirks. None of us can afford to throw stones. But it seems to me that there is a disproportionate amount of Americans who are addicted to their own fear and discomfort. They know no other way of relating to the people around them or to themselves but to be afraid and unwell.
The other day a patient came in with a chronic injury and did not want treatment of any kind for it. She said, "I need my pain. I need to know what I'm feeling. In our discussion, however, which took some time, it evolved into something a bit more complicated. As a very young child, the only way in which she ever received any attention at home was when she was severely ill. Otherwise, her career-driven parents were too busy to care for her.
Is our culture like this? Are we attached to our own fears, our own illnesses, our own sufferings to the extent that we know no other way to function?
And why are we so afraid, so easily terrorized by rumors and suggestions?
As I explained in another Opednews piece (Viral Fear: The Disease of the American Soul, 2007), we live in a place of greater comfort and security than any other in recorded history. The overwhelming majority of us sleep in beds, have food and drink in our kitchens ready for the taking, can get rid of most of our discomforts with a few thin tablets of Tylenol or Advil. Yet we act as if we had nothing, no protection, no help in view, no future. We grasp at whatever crumb of security being tossed to us.
We're thoroughly afraid of everything: of being alone, of being intimate, of being too skinny, of being too fat, of being too young, of being too old, of having too little, of having too much, of changing too fast and of being too still. We're afraid of being alive and we're terrified of dying. The irony is that our fears are precisely commensurate with the distortion in our perceived needs. The more we feel we need, the more afraid we are of not having it, being it or doing it. The more afraid we are, the more we need. And so it goes.
Taking care of ourselves, having meaning and purpose beyond the accumulation of gadgets and clothes that will be old news in 6 months, being accountable to ourselves for our own wellbeing "these things may be far more important than any vaccination.
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