April 29, 2009
It took corporate media swine flu hysteria to ram through a martial law bill in Massachusetts. S18 gives the Governor the power to authorize the deployment and use of force to distribute supplies and materials and local authorities will be allowed to enter private residences for investigation and to quarantine individuals.

The Associated Press reports:
The Massachusetts Senate has unanimously passed a pandemic flu preparation bill that has languished in the Legislature before the recent swine flu outbreak.
The 36-0 vote today sends the measure to the House. Both branches have taken it up in past years, but have not been able to agree on the details.
The new Senate version would allow the public health commissioner — in a public health emergency — to close or evacuate buildings, enter private property for investigations, and quarantine individuals.
The bill specifically mandates the following:
(1) to require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises;
(2) to close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated any building or facility, and to allow the reopening of the building or facility when the danger has ended;
(3) to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated, or to destroy any material;
(4) to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;
(5) to require a health care facility to provide services or the use of its facility, or to transfer the management and supervision of the health care facility to the department or to a local public health authority;
(6) to control ingress to and egress from any stricken or threatened public area, and the movement of persons and materials within the area;
(7) to adopt and enforce measures to provide for the safe disposal of infectious waste and human remains, provided that religious, cultural, family, and individual beliefs of the deceased person shall be followed to the extent possible when disposing of human remains, whenever that may be done without endangering the public health;
(8) to procure, take immediate possession from any source, store, or distribute any anti-toxins, serums, vaccines, immunizing agents, antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical agents or medical supplies located within the commonwealth as may be necessary to respond to the emergency;
(9) to require in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of any individual as a condition of licensure, authorization, or the ability to continue to function as a health care provider in the commonwealth
Any person who knowingly violates an order of the commissioner or his or her designee, or of a local public health authority or its designee, given to effectuate the purposes of this subsection shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or by a fine of note more than one thousand dollars, or both.

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30 April 2009
It is almost three years since we faced the hysteria of an avian flu epidemic, when governments bought billions of dollars of Tamiflu – the same anti-viral now being promoted to combat a supposed swine flu pandemic. The shelf life of Tamiflu also happens to be three years.

The World Health Organization has, at the time of writing, increased its threat level to five, which means governments can activate their pandemic plans – and start handing out Tamiflu drugs.

This is extremely convenient for governments that would have very soon have to dispose of billions of dollars of Tamiflu stock, which they bought to counter avian flu, or H5N1. The US government ordered 20 million doses, costing $2bn, in October, 2005, and around that time the UK government ordered 14.6 million doses. Tamiflu’s manufacturer, Roche, has confirmed that the shelf life of its anti-viral is three years.

England’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has said that the UK is “well prepared” to counter swine flu – but only because it was well prepared to counter an avian flu pandemic that never happened.

The other worry is when, or if, medicine comes up with a specific anti-viral for swine flu. The last time they did – when we had the last swine flu scare in 1976 - health officials rushed through a vaccination programme that resulted in 1 out of 100,000 vaccinated Americans developing Guillain-Barre paralysis. The US government paid out $93 million in compensation.

Those of us who quaked in fear from the expected SARS epidemic and shook from the anticipated avian flu pandemic may feel they’ve been here before. Despite the dire warnings, at the time of writing just 2,600 cases of swine flu have been confirmed or suspected around the world , and there have been 160 deaths, and not all of these may turn out to be caused by swine flu. More people die on UK roads every month.

Meanwhile, while we’re blaming the Mexicans for starting the anticipated global pandemic of swine flu, who are the Mexicans blaming?

Several of their newspapers are pointing the finger at local plants of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer. Mexican journalists report on concerns from locals in Perote, Santa Cruz, Mexico – where the outbreak was believed to have started – that the pig breeding farm polluted the atmosphere and local water supplies.
A municipal health official seems to support the locals’ concerns, and says the outbreak may have been started by flies that reproduced in the pig waste.