Postmortem of a pandemic

Although H1N1 infected millions worldwide, leaving thousands dead, the crisis mentality faded quickly because influenza annually infects millions and kills thousands.

A fact the media rarely pointed out.

"The declaration of the pandemic turned out to be the goose that laid the golden egg for pharmaceutical companies and drug manufacturers," Alcabes said. "That word carries with it such cachet that governments around Europe and North America moved a great deal of public taxpayer money into private, corporate hands to buy products to stave off the coming plague.

Private companies made a profit off taxpayers money using fear? Not too surprised there.

The U.S. government alone spent about $1.6 billion to deploy 250 million doses of the vaccine, according to Alcabes -- "almost enough for every man, woman and child."

"And there's no evidence that mass immunization against influenza makes any difference at all to the severity of influenza outbreaks each year," Alcabes said. "It's an important clinical intervention to be administered to people who, if they were to get infected with flu virus, are likely to experience severe or fatal disease. So did it make sense to offer vaccine to pregnant women? Yes, I think so. But I don't understand how that connects to the idea that everyone in America should be vaccinated."

And lastly my favorite quote.

David agreed that the vaccine had "little to do with the shape of the death curve."

So the vaccines did what exactly?