How the WHO, Pharma and Media Massively Exaggerated The H1N1 Swine Flu

Executive Summary

• The WHO massively exaggerated the H1N1 swine flu.
• Was this a preview of what the WHO would do with covid?

Introduction

It is amazing to go back and read on the behavior of the WHO, media and pharma companies on the H1N1 or swine flu virus of 2008, as the same exaggerations and lies and financial biases were repeated with the covid pandemic.

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Looking Back to H1N1 Hysteria

These quotes are from Der Speigel.

Exaggerated Death Estimate

So the potential significance of the call was clear to Fukuda: the start of a devastating pandemic, in which, according to WHO estimates, between 2.0 and 7.4 million could die — assuming the pandemic was relatively mild.

This exaggerated death estimate was duplicated during the covid pandemic.

The WHO Overestimates the Risk

Does this mean that a very mild course of the pandemic was not even considered from the start? At any rate, efforts to downplay the risks were unwelcome, and the WHO made it clear that it preferred to base its decisions on a worst-case scenario. “We wanted to overestimate rather than underestimate the situation,” says Fukuda.

The 15 experts scattered around the world debated for hours. After the meeting, Chan told the press that the virus was unpredictable and unstoppable. It was official: An influenza pandemic had broken out for the first time in 41 years.

April 30, 2009 : Egypt begins killing all domestic pigs in the country. French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot begs President Hosni Mubarak to stop the mass slaughter, but her appeals are unsuccessful.

This plays into a pattern of the WHO that they exaggerate the risks of pandemics.

Pharma Takes Advantage

The pharmaceutical industry was particularly adept at keeping this vision alive. Manufacturers of flu remedies and vaccines even funded a group of scientists devoted solely to this issue: the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza, which regularly held conferences and meetings of experts. The lobbying group was headed by Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, who also happened to be one of the WHO’s most influential advisors on influenza vaccines.

Jan. 26, 2010: Wolfgang Wodarg, a member of the German parliament, tells the European Council in Strasbourg that “millions of people worldwide were vaccinated for no good reason.” According to Wodarg, the WHO’s classification of the swine flu as a pandemic have earned the pharmaceutical companies $18 billion in additional revenues. Annual sales of Tamiflu alone have jumped 435 percent, to €2.2 billion.

This same issue drove the covid response. Pharma companies jumped on the opportunity to create a fake vaccine and to overcharge governments for this vaccine. When the WHO exaggerates pandemics, the WHO’s buddies in the pharma companies reap the rewards. This indicates that the WHO’s first priority is pharmaceutical profits, and public health and the resources of countries is distant second. Perhaps the name of WHO could be changed from the World Health Organization to the World Pharmaceutical Profits Organization, which would change their acronym to the WPPO.

Pharma Has Little to Offer by Dangerous and Untested Drugs

Meanwhile, a debate had erupted over whether Germany had chosen the wrong vaccine, Pandemrix. It contained a new type of agent designed to boost its effectiveness, known as an adjuvant, which had never undergone large-scale human trials in connection with the swine flu antigen. Were millions of people about to receive a vaccine that had hardly been tested? “This is a large-scale experiment on the German people!” warned Wolfgang Becker-Brüser, publisher of the medical journal Arznei-Telegramm.

In the case of the covid vaccines, mRNA vaccines were rushed through emergency use status.

The WHO Conspires with Drug Companies

Drug companies want the WHO to declare pandemics as it activates clauses in contracts they have signed with governments.

“The pharmaceutical industry did not influence any of our decisions,” says Fukuda. But in mid-May, about three weeks before the swine flu was declared a pandemic, 30 senior representatives of pharmaceutical companies met with WHO Director-General Chan and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at WHO headquarters. The official reason for the meeting was to discuss ways to ensure that developing countries would be provided with pandemic vaccine. But at this point in time the vaccine industry was mainly interested in one question: the decision to declare phase 6.

Everything hung on this decision. At stake was nothing less than a move to supply large segments of the world’s population with flu vaccine. Phase 6 acted as a switch that would allow bells on the industry’s cash registers to ring, risk-free. That’s because many pandemic vaccine contracts had already been signed. Germany, for example, signed an agreement with the British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2007 to buy its pandemic vaccine — as soon as phase 6 was declared. This agreement could explain why Professor Roy Anderson, one key scientific advisor to the British government, declared the swine flu a pandemic on May 1. What he neglected to say was that GSK was paying him an annual salary of more than €130,000 ($177,000).

There are a tremendous number of financial conflicts the WHO has, which it never declares. The WHO can be viewed as a type of rubber stamp on what the pharmaceutical industry wants.

In theory, says former PEI President Löwer, it would have been possible to approve an adjuvant-free swine flu vaccine in Germany. But the contracts for Pandemrix had been signed in 2007, and they came into effect automatically when the WHO decided to declare phase 6. Germany was in a bind.

The German Population is Hesitant About a Flu Vaccine

Aug. 29, 2009 : A SPIEGEL survey shows that only 13 percent of Germans want to be vaccinated.

Comorbidities Drive Up the Deaths Attributed to the Virus

June 10, 2009 : The WHO has received reports of 141 swine flu deaths. The majority of the victims have serious pre-existing conditions. In most cases, however, the course of the infection is mild. A recovered patient tells a German daily newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “My main problem was finding someone to go shopping for me.”

This same issue occurred with covid. Those that died were in most cases close to death.

The 15 experts scattered around the world debated for hours. After the meeting, Chan told the press that the virus was unpredictable and unstoppable. It was official: An influenza pandemic had broken out for the first time in 41 years.

After the WHO Exaggerates a Pandemic for Pharma Profits, They Are Unrepentant

No matter how wrong the WHO gets a pandemic, the H1N1 experience indicates that they never feel bad. This is explained in the following quotation.

What was this pandemic? Was it all just “good practice for an emergency,” as WHO advisor and industry lobbyist Osterhaus puts it?

Yes, getting it wrong and wasting the resources of governments, and slaughtering enormous quantities of livestock on the basis of false claims is “good practice.”

However, observe how they still had their credibility intact after the H1N1 plandemic as people forgot.

Certainly not. No one at the WHO, RKI or PEI should feel proud of themselves. These organizations have gambled away precious confidence. When the next pandemic arrives, who will believe their assessments?

The answer is everyone believed their assessments on covid 13 years later. So it did not impact them as it should have.

Conclusion

The WHO or WPPO has credibility it should not have. It is an agent of Big Pharma and places pharmaceutical profits at the pinnacle of its priority list.