Today's LEAST surprising "news" story

i was digging through some of my more recent memorabilia this past week and came across a brochure that was being handed out by argentine immigration and customs officials last year during the height of the swine flu "pandemic"... i was flying to buenos aires from afghanistan via dubai and sao paulo... swine flu was little more than a side topic of discussion in kabul... i saw no more than 4 or 5 people in the very busy dubai international airport wearing face masks, quite a few more in sao paulo as i was changing planes, and, when i got to buenos aires, all the officials were wearing face masks along with a goodly number of the passengers... i was surprised and remember commenting to myself on what i believed, even at that time, to be an overblown fear tactic... well, guess what...?

Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug makers

European criticism of the World Health Organization's handling of the H1N1 pandemic intensified Friday with the release of two reports that accused the agency of exaggerating the threat posed by the virus and failing to disclose possible influence by the pharmaceutical industry on its recommendations for how countries should respond.

The WHO's response caused widespread, unnecessary fear and prompted countries around the world to waste millions of dollars, according to one report. At the same time, the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations relied on advice from experts with ties to drug makers in developing the guidelines it used to encourage countries to stockpile millions of doses of antiviral medications, according to the second report.

along with the multiple things that annoy me about my fellow "liberals" and "progressives" is the way they pounced on anyone who dared to question the legitimacy of the flu "pandemic" in very much the same way they do with those who question any other item of the liberal/progressive orthodoxy...

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What about that swine flu...

no one would ever consider it was just a bogus scam to enrich big pharma... oh, no-o-o-o-ooo...!

Although it is too early to write the obituary for swine flu, medical experts, already assessing how the first pandemic in 40 years has been handled, have found that while luck played a part, a series of rapid but conservative decisions by federal officials worked out better than many had dared hope.

The outbreak highlighted many national weaknesses: old, slow vaccine technology; too much reliance on foreign vaccine factories; some major hospitals pushed to their limits by a relatively mild epidemic.

But even given those drawbacks, “we did a lot of things right,” concluded Dr. Andrew T. Pavia, chairman of the pandemic flu task force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Federal officials deserve “at least a B-plus,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University’s medical school.

Even Dr. Peter Palese, a leading virologist at Mount Sinai Medical School, who can be a harsh critic of public policies he disagrees with, called the government’s overall response “excellent.”

i don't chase after conspiracy theories, believe me... i've got too much to do dealing with the real world...

nonetheless, it simply amazes me that we can just sit back and soak in our belief that all these super-greedy, power-hungry folks who call all the shots for us peasants always act in the interest of the common good and take the spin of an article like this without even a shrug of skepticism...

yeah, i know... SOME of our esteemed leaders really do try to work on behalf of the common good, but i think they're the rare exception and their efforts invariably get neutered by those who are all to willing to leave them by the side of the road as just so much discarded street pizza...

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