Pandemic influenza or staged government crisis?
By Linda Bentley | September 30, 2009
Pictured receiving a swine flu vaccine in 1976, President Gerald Ford ordered a program to inoculate 220 million Americans against the swine flu, which was abruptly halted after approximately 500 people developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare paralyzing nerve disease, after receiving the vaccination.
Original patent application for H1N1 flu vaccine dated Aug. 28 2007
SCOTTSDALE – In March 2007 Sonoran News attended a meeting with Maricopa County Department of Public Health’s (MCPH) emergency management team that needed volunteers to work a Points of Dispensing drill, which, in the event of a public health emergency, “such as a bio-terrorist attack or pandemic influenza,” could be necessary to establish a network of vaccination sites.
MCPH said Maricopa County was selected to establish a response plan model due to “Arizona’s porous border with Mexico” and Cave Creek Unified School District was chosen to run the drill because it is so well-connected to the community.
Some unusual events have occurred both before and since that emergency drill was held in May 2007.
In March 2005, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released “Interim National Preparedness Goals” and in September 2007, finalized the department’s goals with its “National Preparedness Guidelines,” which included pandemic influenza amongst its set of 15 different “high-consequence threat scenarios of both terrorist attacks and natural disasters.”
In the preface, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff stated, “Protecting America requires constant vigilance and innovation” and said the Guidelines would shape and support preparedness activities, growing and evolving as it strengthens preparedness at all levels of government and within the private sector.
There’s been ever-increasing expansion of federal agencies under the umbrella of the DHS, especially the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
On Aug. 28, 2007, Baxter Healthcare Corp. submitted an application to the U.S. Patent Office for a swine flu (H1N1) vaccine.
No, that’s not a typo – Baxter applied for the patent two years ago to combat the novel H1N1 flu we’ve been led to believe originated in Mexico in April 2009.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) was seeking ways “to shorten the time between the emergence of a pandemic virus and the availability of safe and effective vaccines.”
While the term “pandemic” sounds like a combination of pandemonium and epidemic, all it means is the illness is widespread and does not address severity.
One such method, it said, was to conduct advance studies using a mock-up vaccine containing an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations.
In order to test the mock-up vaccine, “the novel influenza virus is released into the population” to “mimic the novelty of a pandemic virus, and greatly expedite regulatory approval.”
In August 2009, WHO issued an H1N1 briefing note about the safety of vaccines, stating it was “aware of some media reports that have expressed concern about the safety of vaccines for pandemic influenza. The public needs to be reassured that regulatory procedures in place … including procedures for expediting regulatory approval, are rigorous and do not compromise safety or quality controls.”
If deliberately releasing a novel influenza virus into the population doesn’t cause concern, the vaccines manufactured to combat the swine flu pandemic of 1976 might, since the vaccine killed more people than did the flu.
In February 1976, a Fort Dix Army recruit told his drill instructor he felt sick but not bad enough to seek medical care or forego training exercises. Within 24 hours, 19-year-old Pvt. David Lewis of Ashley Falls, Mass. was dead from swine flu.
Military doctors conducted tests at Fort Dix where they determined 500 soldiers had caught swine flu without becoming ill. They warned, nonetheless, any flu able to reach that many people so quickly was capable of becoming another plague.
How the swine flu got to Fort Dix in 1976 remains a mystery, but doctors said it was only luck that more men didn’t die from the “killer flu.”
Even though Lewis was the only one to die from the swine flu in 1976, President Gerald Ford ordered a program to inoculate 220 million Americans against the “deadly” virus.
After mass vaccinations began that October, reports began rolling in of people developing Guillain-Barré syndrome after receiving the vaccination, a rare paralyzing nerve disease, affecting at least 500 people and killing more than 30.
Public outrage and reluctance to risk being vaccinated caused the program to be abruptly canceled mid-December.
Squalene, an adjuvant (substance injected along with an antigen to enhance the immune response stimulated by the antigen) used in vaccines employed by the military, has been associated with Gulf War Syndrome.
Perhaps more disturbing was a June 6, 2005 New York Times op-ed titled “Grounding a Pandemic,” penned by then Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., its chairman.
Lugar, who joined the Chicago Climate Exchange, a pilot program for trading greenhouse gases (carbon credits) in 2006, was also a speaker at the Council on Foundations’ Family Philanthropy Conference this past February, as was Obama’s recently ousted communist “Green” czar Anthony “Van” Jones.
The opinion piece began: “When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic. An outbreak could cause millions of deaths, destabilize Southeast Asia (its likely place of origin), and threaten the security of governments around the world.”
Because a killer flu could spread around the world in days, “crippling economies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere,” Obama and Lugar claimed “international health experts” have said two of the three conditions for an avian flu pandemic had already been met, a new strain of the virus had emerged (H5N1), which humans had little or no immunity to, and second, the strain could jump between species.
The only remaining “obstacle,” they said, was that the H5N1 virus had not yet mutated into a form easily transmitted from human to human.
Obama and Lugar asserted, “It is essential for the international community, led by the United States, to take decisive action to prevent a pandemic.”
The World Health Organization called for $100 million to be devoted to “effective preventative action.”
Congress promptly responded with $25 million, which Obama and Lugar said would allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for International Development, the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies “to improve their ability to act.”
Last month, a three-day International Swine Flu Conference was held in Washington, D.C., where “top leaders and key decision-makers of major companies representing a broad range of industries” met with “distinguished scientists, public health officials, law enforcers, first responders and other experts to discuss pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery …”
The conference also held breakout sessions to help deal with, for example, the public’s “unwillingness to follow government orders.”