From the December 2003 Idaho Observer:

Media-enhanced hysteria promotes this year's multi-billion dollar flu scare season

COEUR D'ALENE -- According to KXLY News in Spokane, people began lining up in front of the Panhandle Health District here as early as 6:45 a.m. on the 25 degree morning of Dec. 8, 2003. Apparently responding to news over the weekend that the area, the nation and the entire world is experiencing a shortage of flu vaccine, many north Idaho residents got out of bed early to be first in line to get theirs.

Several local newspapers throughout the nation and the USA Today reported similar “runs” on vaccines all over the country.

According to the CDC, some 20 million of the 94 million doses of last year's vaccine were unused and only 80 million doses were made/are available for this year. Curiously, the entire stock of vaccine for this year reportedly contains the three flu strains used last year. If true, it would appear manufacturers merely diluted last year's leftovers.

According to CDC National Immunization Program Director Dr. William Atkinson in the CDC's internationally broadcast “Preparing for the Next Influenza Pandemic (February 25, 1999),” for a flu vaccine to be effective, it must contain antigens to the currently circulating influenza strain.

Interestingly, Atkinson also stated during that broadcast that an influenza pandemic is inevitable and, he predicted, there will not be enough flu vaccine to go around. “High priority groups must be identifiable in case of a vaccine shortage,” Atkinson warned (The Idaho Observer, June, 1999).

The trivalent (three-antigen) flu vaccines available last year (and this year) contained antigens for three types of influenza, none of which are reportedly circulating this year. This fact renders this year's flu shot ineffective -- at best.

Yet public health officials, through the dominant media, are whipping people into a flu shot-demanding frenzy. At this time, the news is filled with reports of people standing in line for flu vaccine, entire states such as Wyoming running completely out of vaccine and entire regions and nations backordering vaccines to meet the clamoring demand.

Whether orchestrated or just one of those freak complications of an unpredictable supply-and-demand marketplace, one of the most basic and embarrassing elements of the petty human condition/comedy has been triggered globally with this issue. Humans tend to be covetous by nature; to tell a person he cannot have something makes him want it all the more.

Vaccine producers claim they only have 80 million doses of (last year's?) flu vaccine available and that it will take at least four more months to produce more. The flu season will be over by then. As the newsstories continue to pound home the message there is almost nothing that can be done about the international shortage of flu vaccine; as the news media reports that people are dying from the flu (many dying after receiving the shot) the hysteria is reaching unprecedented disease-scare levels.

Students of Georg Hegel, father of the Hegelian dialectic, will be happy to know there is a solution. The CDC is recommending that, “healthy people between the ages 5-49” should take the new FluMist vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved FluMist, an intranasal influenza vaccine, for use in healthy persons aged 5 -- 49 years June 17, 2003. Supplies of this experimental vaccine are available at locations such as grocery stores, drug stores and doctors' offices all over the nation. All one has to do is go to the website http://flumist.com/con_finder.asp, type in their zip code and a list of locations where FluMist is being spread will appear.

The sentence above can be interpreted literally, according to the FluMist package insert. FluMist is a live-virus vaccine. Recipients, according to the vaccine manufacturers, are contagious for up to 21 days after receiving the vaccine. Unhealthy persons who take the FluMist vaccine can experience mild to severe adverse reactions that include death. The package insert also warns FluMist recipients to avoid contact with immuno compromised persons for 21 days. Nearly 50 percent of the population has some health condition that would qualify them as “immuno compromised.”

An excellent article on FluMist, “New FluMist vaccine nothing to sneeze at,” by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, was published in the Oct., 2003 hard copy edition of The Idaho Observer [and is available online at www.vaclib.org].

The CDC has been preparing for the next influenza pandemic since the swine flu fiasco of 1976. The CDC has also predicted that the next one could kill some 400,000 Americans and hospitalize up to 2,000,000 more. The CDC foreshadowed the day when not enough vaccine would be available.

It should also be noted that all flu vaccines contain thimerosal, a compound that is 50 percent mercury, one of the world's most notorious carcinogens. The FDA has never established a “safe” level of human exposure to mercury.