CBC’s The Current is running a piece this morning about world panics like SARS and swine flu (H1N1).
Apparently the World Health Organization changed their definition of a pandemic before H1N1. It seems that the rest of the world heard “pandemic” and thought of the old definition which is akin to “plague.”
No surprise that the questions now revolve around who was on the committee that made the decision to change the definition and declare H1N1 a pandemic. Were there financial reasons for that decision? I guess the WHO doesn’t want to say who was on the committee.
The WHO has certainly discredited itself by taking the actions it has. There may well be a true pandemic that really is broadly lethal, but will people listen next time?
It seems now that the declaration of a pandemic had more to do with lining the pockets of pharmaceutical companies eager to sell anti-viral drugs and a rushed-to-market vaccine.
Am I worried about the next pandemic? No, not really. I’m certainly going to be quite skeptical. In the future I plan to look for vaccines that are mercury-free at the very least. I’m more worried about poor quality and contaminated vaccines.
This is sort of ironic as I am partway through one of my favourite books: Stephen King’s The Stand. It’s about a flu-like virus that escapes a U.S. government virus research facility and wipes out about 99.5% of the human population.
I like it because it’s plausible. It’s much scarier than vampires and werewolves.
What I do think is plausible is that we’re going to hear more BS announcements from the chicken little WHO about how we should panic over the latest virus with the greatest potential for the big pharmaceutical companies to profit heavily.
Some things never change.
*cough cough*
Related posts:
