Flu Superstitions: Michael Fumento on bird flu hysteria:
We're also routinely told that we're "overdue" for a pandemic, with H5N1 the likeliest cause. Insert the search terms "avian flu," "pandemic," and "overdue" into Google and you'll get about 35,000 hits. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Anthony Fauci, insists we're "overdue," explaining that there were 3 pandemics in the 20th century and the last was in 1968. It's been 38 years since the last pandemic . Yet the time between the second and third pandemics was only 11 years. There's no cycle. As risk communication experts Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard say, the "overdue pandemic" is mere superstition.
We do here that a lot. I've been hearing it for 20 years now in every lecture on influenza I've ever attended. Kind of like my grandmother who was always expecting another Great Depression any day now. If we only wait long enough, it's bound to happen.
Where does a LAWYER get off being published by the AMA to 'teach' doctors about the likelyhood of an infectious disease?
ReplyDeleteEvery public health official, every virologist, and nearly every infectious disease professional in the world says 'it could happen and soon.'
The public health people say we don't have enough of the resources to deal with it if it happens imminently.
Flu pandemics happen. The technology to treat them doesn't magically appear overnight--we have knowledge but not enough ability to manufacture the protections which Fumento so cavalierly cites.
I am sick of this guy getting 'air time' on this issue, about which his understanding in all his publications on the issue is clearly of only the most superficial nature.
Sorry to make you a victim of one of my many compulsions.
ReplyDelete"We do HEAR that a lot."
I think it's time for me to start retaking my lithium.