Health agency officials still throwing around the H1N1 (Swine Flu) PANDEMIC terms as though it came near record levels of illness and deaths

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Report: More Than 70 Million Doses of H1N1 Vaccine May Have to Be Discarded

Thursday, April 01, 2010

When the H1N1 vaccine first became available last fall, the doses were worth their weight in gold to many people desperate to get the shot,
but now it’s being reported the government is about to throw away
millions of those “precious” vaccines.

The news comes just days after health officials warned Americans the H1N1 flu season is not over yet, with the Southeast reporting an increase in
cases of the virus.

According to a report in the Washington Post, less than half of the 229 million doses of the vaccine the government bought to fight the virus have been
administered, which leaves an estimated 71.5 million doses that will
have to be discarded if they are not used before they expire.

Still, government officials said they are “satisfied with the effort.”

"Did we do as well as we would have liked to? No, not at all," Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
"But the country did an extraordinary job of responding. It's pretty
incredible to think about how much uncertainty we had at the beginning
of this."

Schuchat added that it was “unavoidable that some doses would go to waste.”

"We were dealing with a very unusual situation. We had a pandemic. We had young people being killed," she said. "We wanted to make sure we had
enough. We didn't want to be short. It was important to us to be able
to protect the American people."

Federal officials estimate that between 81 million and 91 million doses of the vaccine were given to people through the end of February.

[Since the outbreak of the H1N1 flu a year ago, the CDC estimates that more than 60 million people in the U.S. were sickened by the virus, at least 265,000 were hospitalized and more than 12,000 died.]

Since these figures are estimates from the CDC and NOT hard numbers no real complaints of mismanagement can be sounded. Actual numbers are going to be kept out of the general population so no immediate analysis can be made.The count of deaths from Swine Flu can be easily verified but the CDC leaves their numbers as estimates. I believe the numbers have been grossly over reported. At least one state stopped reporting actual Swine Flu cases at the direction of the CDC.

This is a classic example of what happens when government gets too big and politics plays a role in national health decisions.

The next example of government over-reach and expansion beyond reasonable capability will be Obamacare. Watch for the next CDC estimates of life and death. PWS

[Oregon Country Girl]

Absolutely the "Swine Flu" was blown out of proportion. Certain companies made a ton of money off the vaccines being produced...and some of them were from foreign countries. Which may, or may not be unusual, as our countries are "tied together economically." More people die per year from the normal "flu." I'm not going to run right out and get a shot. I'm not going to worry about any "supposed" pandemic.