Swine Flu Fearmongering

Thought I'd make a thread for us all to post the evidence of fearmongering that the MSM are currently envolved in to try and track how they might be working to encourage people to rush forward for the vaccine once it becomes available.

THE number of people with swine flu in the UK DOUBLED last week to 100,000 cases.
There are now 840 people in hospital with the virus and 63 in intensive care

The new data comes as a website and telephone helpline service for victims of swine flu were launched today.

Within just minutes of the website going live it was flooded by millions of worried Brits - causing it to crash.

Visitors trying to get an online diagnosis were given the message: "The Service is currently very busy and cannot deal with your request at this time. Please try again in a little while."

Most of those hospitalised are aged 16 to 64, with 435 cases, followed by the under-fives, with 169 cases.

Among those aged over 65, 149 people are in hospital and there are 87 cases among young people aged five to 15.

Tower Hamlets in East London continues to have the highest number of GP consultations in the UK for people with flu-like illness.

It is seeing 792 consultations per 100,000 people, followed by Islington in North London with 488 consultations per 100,000.

Other badly affected parts of England include Greenwich, South East London, Leicester, and Telford & Wrekin, Shropshire.

The Government's National Flu Pandemic Service for England is being staffed by more than 1,500 call centre staff, with the option of recruiting 500 more.

The initial 1,500 will be capable of more than 200,000 calls a day — or more than one million calls a week.

People can also fill out a questionnaire online to receive a diagnosis of swine flu.

They supply their name, address and date of birth either online or to a call centre member of staff before receiving a code.

A "flu friend" can then use the code to pick up the antiviral Tamiflu from a collection point on the patient's behalf, using a form of identification from the patient.

More serious cases such as pregnant women, people with health conditions and very young children will still be referred to GPs.

The free phone number will be up and running for 15 hours a day initially but it could become a 24-hour service if required.

Link


(Admins, feel free to delete if you think we have enough swine flu threads, just wasn't sure which thread to post this news in and thought this kind of fearmongering needed its own!)


[edit on 23-7-2009 by JennyJen]

No fearmongering, its just numbers and statistics. Fearmongering is saying things like "Swine flu to kill millions" or "Swine flu is going to eat your family"

Many of these swine flu cases are not confirmed. At my work we were talking today about how it'd be nice to use the excuse just to take some time off work. Who is to say these figures are correct, anyhow? It is easy for people to pick these numbers out the air when we have no way of proving their data is correct. Besides, even if they are correct, there are thousands and thousands of people who recover without medical/hospital attention, quite easily from it, yet the MSM like to focus on the minority that are affected badly, mainly with underlying health reasons. This focus is what qualifies it as 'fearmongering' when even Doctors say it isn't a major health concern for the main majority.

(Edited to add to reply)

[edit on 23-7-2009 by JennyJen]

[edit on 23-7-2009 by JennyJen]

[edit on 23-7-2009 by JennyJen]

[edit on 23-7-2009 by JennyJen]

I would wonder about msm fearmongering if there had ever been more headlines about this than the death of Michael Jackson, rip. How many links can you provide about doctors not being concerned? There shouldn't be hardly any flu cases in the northern hemisphere since May, much less a new strain.

reply to post by winotka


According to the UK Media, flu cases have doubled in the UK to 100,000 in the last week, so if that is right, then the northern hemisphere has alot to be concerned about (if the flu itself was generally lifethreatening on a whole.) Currently, there aren't many reports online from Doctors saying that it isn't a big deal, mainly because that kind of news isn't what sells papers, sensationalism and bad news is. I have tomorrow off work, so if you want evidence from professionals then I'm sure I can find plenty of evidence to link to then, although I believe many others have already provided that in other threads.

If you believe that Swine Flu is a major threat that requires the need for this level of fearmongering and enforced vaccination, then please share your argument and evidence for believing so.

I'm an avid news watcher and online news watcher....wonder why I didn't hear a peep about so many cases in the UK?? One would think if there were THAT many cases, it would be all over the American news media. Not a word. Hmmm, odd.

reply to post by MadDogtheHunter


Yeah, I'd just assumed that it was this bad everywhere but I spoke to a friend in Sweden last night and she said there are only about 720 cases there.

Go read 'The Coming Plague' by Laurie Garrett.
(It's a brilliant piece of investigative journalism)
Then tell me that there is nothing to fear from Swine Flu.

I am just recovering from this swine flu. It hit me like a truck, I was sick for 3 nights with a high fever, and it disappeared through the day. The only symptoms where the fever and a sore neck for 3 days. Then the fever left and classic flu symptoms began, running nose, cough etc very weird virus IMO I haven't had one like it before.

Just my 2c

A couple of months ago I'd come on ATS and find about half the new posts were about swine flu (this was when the swine flu forum was started) and a lot of it was speculation and hysterics about the PTB having bioengineered the virus to kill us all and BS like that. At the same time the National News was giving the story about 5 minutes on their evening broadcast, and it wasn't even their top story. So...who is doing the fearmongering?

Originally posted by Charis
the PTB having bioengineered the virus

Which is probably true. If you had read any of the threads here you would have seen the scientific evidence that supports that theory.

the National News was giving the story about 5 minutes on their evening broadcast,

No it didn't. If anything, the news had a CAP on it.
Downplay and develop apathy amongst the people ... that was what they did.

I don't know what news you were watching that it was on every five minutes....

I honestly think the world in general is making too big a deal out of this right now. I mean, the US has a population of over 300 million people, and out of this number of citizens.....theres only about 40,000 confirmed cases of H1N1. Do the math...that is a VERY small number of our population being confirmed with H1N1. Its nowhere near time to panic, atleast not yet. The entire earth population is around 7 billion...and less than 1% of that number has the swine flu (H1N1). Pour a drink of bourbon, and kick back and relax.....many more people catch the common cold every year than have this swine flu BS. I bet in a couple years, most will forget about H1N1 and be talking about something different.

Flyersfan - Thank you for the recommendation of that article, I'll hunt it down to read in a minute.

Iulslian - I'm sorry to hear that you've gone through it! I don't doubt for a second that it is very unpleasent to have, theres 3 people at my work off with it and I have four friends that are currently recovering.

Charis - That may have been the case originally, we come to this site to debate the conspiracies that may surround this and what comes with that, is a little fear of suspecion but we enter the forum with that in mind. You don't say where you live, but I have noticed hugely in the UK that all the newspapers and news channels are going nuts over it and blowing it way out of proportion. Of the apparently 100,000 new cases here, only 26 people have died and the majority of those were with underlying health issues. There are also 840 people in hospital (63 in critical care) so I am not denying that it is an issue. However 99,134 people have recovered from it, without the need for hospitalisation. Thats 99.1% who got through it fine.
There needs to be some perspective on this, yes it can kill, yes it can put people in hospital but the same can be said for nuts and bee stings. The worst they make this sound, the more desperate people are getting for a vaccine and will be climbing over eachother to get it when its released. Perhaps these news sites should also be fearmongering about the amount of deaths and illnesses that have been caused by vaccines over the years too.

MDTH- Really only 40,000 in the whole of the US? The more I hear from other countries, the more impossible it sounds for a place as small as the UK and with an infinately smaller population, to currently have these 100,000 new cases.

I just heard on the news, that the WHO says theres about close to 140,000 confirmed cases of H1N1 worldwide. Ok, once again, do the math. Out of almost 7 billion people, this is a tiny, tiny percentage infected.

Now, the WHO also predicted that 2 billion people will be infected by the time the H1N1 virus is over with. Um, my concern is, how the hell do they know that? The only way they could know that is if the whole thing was planned.

Theres deffinately 2 sides to this coin. The one side being the actual LOW percentage of the the world population (less than 1%) that has the H1N1 virus. And the other side is these idiots making outlandish predictions like that, obviously trying to scare people.

Until the world starts looking like a chapter from Stephen Kings "The Stand"...or that movie "28 Days Later"....I'm NOT going to worry.

Originally posted by MadDogtheHunter
I just heard on the news, that the WHO says theres about close to 140,000 confirmed cases of H1N1 worldwide.

One of these news folk are lying because there is no way in Hell that England can account for 100,000 of that figure. It just goes to show that you can't believe a word they are telling us.

WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said evidence from previous pandemics suggested even a few million cases could be seen relatively early in the pandemic.

He added that the sharp spike in cases in England - a doubling in the past week to 100,000 new cases - was consistent with what they expected.

BBC News



[edit on 24-7-2009 by JennyJen]

As of todays date, according to the CDC....the total number of confirmed cases of H1N1 in the US is: 40,617

Total H1N1 related Deaths: 263 (mostly the elderly and children)

90% of confirmed cases are occurring within and around the major population centers (ex: NYC, LA, Philidelphia and so on).

One of these cases is less than 25 miles from my home. But I'm still not worried.

reply to post by JennyJen


I don't believe I mentioned enforced vaccination and I still can't see anything as I read various websites this afternoon that are causing me to panic. There are already many news links on the flu update thread that can be checked or simply go to the WHO website.