Friday night Pandemic Watch - Swine Flu coming to you?

[American Dream]

Commentary: Look who's profiting from this year's flu season
By Brett Arends, WSJ.com

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- How much could Donald Rumsfeld make from this swine flu panic, anyway?

I put a call into his office, but the former Secretary of Defense doesn't want to comment. (His staff says Rummy is hard at work on his memoirs. Ominous news for the GOP: The book is penciled in to hit the bookstores next fall -- just around the time of the mid-term elections).

Rumsfeld is the highest profile figure associated with Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD) , the California biopharma behind the Tamiflu vaccine. He is the company's former chairman, and at the last disclosure a few years back still held a stake in the company worth somewhere up to $25 million.

One thing we know for certain: Flu times are good times at Gilead. No stockholders anywhere stand to make as much from flu panic.

"The biggest beneficiary to the world's dilemma with the H1N1 virus is Gilead Sciences," says a report from research firm BWS Financial, Inc. Gilead will be in a sweet spot if swine flu turns into mass panic, it says. "We believe (Gilead) remains the true investment on the H1N1 theme."

Gilead licensed its Tamiflu vaccine to pharmaceutical giant Roche back in 1996, but gets lucrative royalties on sales. Gilead's revenue from Tamiflu came to about $400 million during the bird flu panic in 2006-2007, BWS estimates.

An analysis by Deutsche Bank predicts Gilead will get about $195 million revenue from Tamiflu just in the fourth quarter of this year, and another $137 million in the first quarter of next year. Deutsche argues that Wall Street has so far underestimated the likely gains. (Deutsche's analysis is based on results from Roche, which has just reported its third quarter figures. Gilead gets its cut from Roche's sales one quarter later.)

Tamiflu is only one part of the business. Gilead is a broad biotech company. But Wall Street loves a story, and if the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, causes a stampede this winter Gilead could get a lot of attention.

The irony about flu vaccines is that they may not even work. A very plausible takedown on the flu vaccine business was published recently in The Atlantic. Read here. But don't expect that to hurt demand. Everyone and their aunt will probably be crowding into emergency rooms at the first sign of a runny nose this winter, demanding treatments, regardless of any effectiveness.

In the so-called home of the brave, the easiest thing to sell is fear.

Gilead stock was only about $16 four years ago. But in 2005 it took off, after the Bush administration responded to the bird flu panic by ordering large quantities of Tamiflu. It has since tripled to about $46.

On the advice of government counsel at the time, Mr. Rumsfeld recused himself from all decisions about Tamiflu and pandemic preparedness. But the rules should really forbid him, or any Secretary of Defense, from owning shares directly at all.

Gilead's booming stock price has generated a lot of windfalls at the company. According to the most recent public filings, executives and staff are sitting on share and option awards that may be worth about $1.6 billion at current levels. That would be, remarkably, an average of $400,000 per person for the 4,000-employee firm, although of course the benefits are hardly distributed equally. Chairman and Chief Executive John Martin made $11 million a year in each of the last two years, and booked a personal profit of $28.5 million by exercising stock options just in 2008.

The Tamiflu connection is proving good news for left-wing conspiracy theorists. In his last financial disclosure as defense secretary, more than two years ago, Donald Rumsfeld revealed he still owned a stake in Gilead worth somewhere between $5 million and $25 million. Since then Gilead shares have risen by nearly a half. Of course, we don't know what -- if anything -- he holds now.

Is it too late to get in on the action? Maybe. Gilead shares, at around $46, look pretty reasonably priced at 17 times next year's forecast earnings. But call options offer a leveraged bet on further swine flu hysteria: For $3 a share you can buy a $50 call good at any point between now and next May.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/story/ ... DFF4D139E6

[stickdog99]

http://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8;jsessionid=3918F0951BF760A23BFCAEE930FADADD

Adverse H1N1 Vaccine Effects Self-Reported So Far

3 Deaths
7 Life Threatening Events
12 Hospitalizations
204 Emergency Room visits
667 Not Serious

893 total adverse events reported so far vs. no documented benefit

There have been over 10,000,000 doses given in the states alone. The people who died almost certainly died from anaphylactic shock reactions due to the egg protein in the vaccine.

And of these 10 million people, how many benefited how much by not getting the H1N1 they may or may not have contracted without the shot? Isn't that number completely unknown?

This is the trouble with current vaccination "studies" (of which none at all were run for the new H1N1 vaccines). You need to do a blind, longitudinal placebo controlled trial of thousands of subjects to scientifically demonstrate that the medical benefits of these vaccines definitely outweigh their risks. But since this is assumed to be the case without any scientific proof, any such studies are deemed unethical and irresponsible.

Neither of us have any way to know that. The point being, even if you wholly believed the vaccine was a good thing, the numbers would stand. And these numbers actually support the case that the vaccine is statistically exceptionally safe. Chances are that some of the people who died from the vaccine would have died from anaphylaxis anyways.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? The vaccine is quite safe compared to what? Medicines are given to sick people. Vaccines are the only substances we are advised to inject into our healthy bodies on the off-chance that they might protect a small percentage of us from potential future illness. Of all vaccinations, flu vaccinations offer the most temporally limited protection against a seasonally mutating target illness that would almost certainly at worst sicken us for a few days (while conferring a measure of natural resistance).

There is a tiny chance a flu shot might kill you on the spot, a small chance a flu shot might lead to immediate health complications and an unknown chance that a flu shot might cause or contribute to future long term illnesses. All this for an unknown factor of protection against a sickness that you probably won't get anyway, and that you almost certainly will recover from completely if you do get.

So in getting a flu shot you are actively accepting a small immediate and largely unknown long term health risk in exchange for an unknown measure of short duration protection against a relatively innocuous illness.

The question that remains completely unanswered as the hysteria builds and the shots are administered by the millions is whether the overall health benefits of vaccinations exceed their overall health risks. To ask for a scientific answer to this question is to be deemed radical, irresponsible and unethical in our current medical environment.

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.patentstorm.us/applications/ ... ltext.html

Application Filed on June 1, 2005
The present invention relates, in general, to attenuated swine influenza viruses having an impaired ability to antagonize the cellular interferon (IFN) response, and the use of such attenuated viruses in vaccine and pharmaceutical formulations. In particular, the invention relates to attenuated swine influenza viruses having modifications to a swine NS1 gene that diminish or eliminate the ability of the NS1 gene product to antagonize the cellular IFN response. These viruses replicate in vivo, but demonstrate decreased replication, virulence and increased attenuation, and therefore are well suited for use in live virus vaccines, and pharmaceutical formulations.

[lightningBugout]

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

It is supposed to mean this -- immediately, deaths and illness can only be correlated with the administration of the vaccine. To have such an incredibly small amount of correlation suggests that the vaccine is probably not making anyone sick.

Medicines are given to sick people.

Hardly. Take psychotropics which reciprocally create their own individual diseases. And if someone is living a lifestyle that makes them diseased and you give them "medicine" to assuage the symptoms, that's hardly a clear cut case of "medicine" for sick people.

Vaccines are the only substances we are advised to inject into our healthy bodies on the off-chance that they might protect a small percentage of us from potential future illness.

Weasel words. You're generalizing so broadly that its scarcely worth responding. So, if you were going to travel to the Congo (I'm assuming you live somewhere in the West), would you choose not to get vaccinated against the various buggies there? I mean seriously - you are coming off as if vaccination is a category of treatment that is inherently quixotic - "off-chance?" Are you kidding here? Really. Ever heard of Polio or Smallpox?

Of all vaccinations, flu vaccinations offer the most temporally limited protection against a seasonally mutating target illness that would almost certainly at worst sicken us for a few days (while conferring a measure of natural resistance).

Simply not true. Yes, for *most* people with *most* flus it is very likely their illness will be minimal. But you seem to be taking personal offense to the fact that some people, who are prone to get much sicker than others, might benefit from the flu shot. Where were you raising a stink last year this time when flu shots were prescribed for people over 65?

[23]

Ever heard of Polio or Smallpox?

I have. And so have some children in Nigeria:

Polio Outbreak from Mutated Vaccine Virus
http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/eu ... /1320-1320

Ironic, isn't it?

If you're vaccinated, you pose a danger to the nonvaccinated.

Ironic indeed.

If you're vaccinated with a live virus, I'd appreciate a little distance between us, please.

Thanks in advance.

[lightningBugout]

Ever heard of Polio or Smallpox?

I have. And so have some children in Nigeria:

Polio Outbreak from Mutated Vaccine Virus
http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/eu ... /1320-1320

Ironic, isn't it?

If you're vaccinated, you pose a danger to the nonvaccinated.

Ironic indeed.

If you're vaccinated with a live virus, I'd appreciate a little distance between us, please.

Thanks in advance.

I see. Is that intended to be a slam-dunk against the entire history of vaccination programs? Even allopathic medicine itself maybe?

ps. I've been meaning to note this for ages -- intolerance of ambiguity is also the mark of the deeply traumatized.

[23]

Ever heard of Polio or Smallpox?

I have. And so have some children in Nigeria:

Polio Outbreak from Mutated Vaccine Virus
http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/eu ... /1320-1320

Ironic, isn't it?

If you're vaccinated, you pose a danger to the nonvaccinated.

Ironic indeed.

If you're vaccinated with a live virus, I'd appreciate a little distance between us, please.

Thanks in advance.

I see. Is that intended to be a slam-dunk against the entire history of vaccination programs? Even allopathic medicine itself maybe?

Which history would you be talking about? The official government one, or the one compiled after exhaustive self-directed research?

I trust the latter, but not the former.

And since I haven't conducted an exhaustive inquiry into the history of vaccinations... and I possess a healthy distrust of Government accounts in general... it couldn't have been be a slam dunk.

Maybe that's why the Government has its panties tied up in a knot to get the general masses vaccinated.

To protect the nonvaccinated from getting a virus from those folks who have been vaccinated with one.

[stickdog99]

Hardly. Take psychotropics which reciprocally create their own individual diseases. And if someone is living a lifestyle that makes them diseased and you give them "medicine" to assuage the symptoms, that's hardly a clear cut case of "medicine" for sick people.

Agreed. But the fact that psychotropics may be even worse than flu vaccines means?

Weasel words. You're generalizing so broadly that its scarcely worth responding.

Then feel free to stop responding.

Simply not true. Yes, for *most* people with *most* flus it is very likely their illness will be minimal. But you seem to be taking personal offense to the fact that some people, who are prone to get much sicker than others, might benefit from the flu shot. Where were you raising a stink last year this time when flu shots were prescribed for people over 65?

Here's the problem: It's the exact same people who could most benefit from these vaccines (older folks) for which there is the least evidence of benefit.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/20 ... wnlee-h1n1

Yet in the view of several vaccine skeptics, this claim is suspicious on its face. Influenza causes only a small minority of all deaths in the U.S., even among senior citizens, and even after adding in the deaths to which flu might have contributed indirectly. When researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases included all deaths from illnesses that flu aggravates, like lung disease or chronic heart failure, they found that flu accounts for, at most, 10 percent of winter deaths among the elderly. So how could flu vaccine possibly reduce total deaths by half? ...

The estimate of 50 percent mortality reduction is based on “cohort studies,” which compare death rates in large groups, or cohorts, of people who choose to be vaccinated, against death rates in groups who don’t. ...

When Lisa Jackson, a physician and senior investigator with the Group Health Research Center, in Seattle, began wondering aloud to colleagues if maybe something was amiss with the estimate of 50 percent mortality reduction for people who get flu vaccine, the response she got sounded more like doctrine than science. “People told me, ‘No good can come of [asking] this,’” she says. “‘Potentially a lot of bad could happen’ for me professionally by raising any criticism that might dissuade people from getting vaccinated, because of course, ‘We know that vaccine works.’ This was the prevailing wisdom.”

Nonetheless, in 2004, Jackson and three colleagues set out to determine whether the mortality difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated might be caused by a phenomenon known as the “healthy user effect.” They hypothesized that on average, people who get vaccinated are simply healthier than those who don’t, and thus less liable to die over the short term. People who don’t get vaccinated may be bedridden or otherwise too sick to go get a shot. They may also be more likely to succumb to flu or any other illness, because they are generally older and sicker. To test their thesis, Jackson and her colleagues combed through eight years of medical data on more than 72,000 people 65 and older. They looked at who got flu shots and who didn’t. Then they examined which group’s members were more likely to die of any cause when it was not flu season.

Jackson’s findings showed that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the “frail elderly” didn’t or couldn’t. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all. Jackson’s papers “are beautiful,” says Lone Simonsen, who is a professor of global health at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and an internationally recognized expert in influenza and vaccine epidemiology. “They are classic studies in epidemiology, they are so carefully done.”

The results were also so unexpected that many experts simply refused to believe them. ... “The answer I got,” says Jackson, “was not the right answer.”

The history of flu vaccination suggests other reasons to doubt claims that it dramatically reduces mortality. In 2004, for example, vaccine production fell behind, causing a 40 percent drop in immunization rates. Yet mortality did not rise. In addition, vaccine “mismatches” occurred in 1968 and 1997: in both years, the vaccine that had been produced in the summer protected against one set of viruses, but come winter, a different set was circulating. In effect, nobody was vaccinated. Yet death rates from all causes, including flu and the various illnesses it can exacerbate, did not budge. Sumit Majumdar, a physician and researcher at the University of Alberta, in Canada, offers another historical observation: rising rates of vaccination of the elderly over the past two decades have not coincided with a lower overall mortality rate. In 1989, only 15 percent of people over age 65 in the U.S. and Canada were vaccinated against flu. Today, more than 65 percent are immunized. Yet death rates among the elderly during flu season have increased rather than decreased. ...

“Tom Jefferson has taken a lot of heat just for saying, ‘Here’s the evidence: it’s not very good,’” says Majumdar. “The reaction has been so dogmatic and even hysterical that you’d think he was advocating stealing babies.” Yet while other flu researchers may not like what Jefferson has to say, they cannot ignore the fact that he knows the flu-vaccine literature better than anyone else on the planet. He leads an international team of researchers who have combed through hundreds of flu-vaccine studies. The vast majority of the studies were deeply flawed, says Jefferson. “Rubbish is not a scientific term, but I think it’s the term that applies.” Only four studies were properly designed to pin down the effectiveness of flu vaccine, he says, and two of those showed that it might be effective in certain groups of patients, such as school-age children with no underlying health issues like asthma. The other two showed equivocal results or no benefit.

Flu researchers have been fooled into thinking vaccine is more effective than the data suggest, in part, says Jefferson, by the imprecision of the statistics. The only way to know if someone has the flu—as opposed to influenza-like illness—is by putting a Q-tip into the patient’s throat or nose and running a test, which simply isn’t done that often. Likewise, nobody really has a handle on how many of the deaths that are blamed on flu were actually caused by a flu virus, because few are confirmed by a laboratory. “I used to be a family physician,” says Jefferson. “I’ve never seen a patient come to my office with H1N1 written on his forehead. When an old person dies of respiratory failure after an influenza-like illness, they nearly always get coded as influenza.”

There’s one other way flu researchers may be fooled into thinking flu vaccine is effective, Jefferson says. All vaccines work by delivering a dose of killed or weakened virus or bacteria, which provokes the immune system into producing antibodies. When the person is subsequently exposed to the real thing, the body is already prepared to repel the bug completely or to get rid of it after a mild illness. Flu researchers often use antibody response as a way of gauging the effectiveness of vaccine, on the assumption that levels of antibodies in the blood of people who have been vaccinated are a good predictor—although an imperfect one—of how well they can ward off the infection.

There’s some merit to this reasoning. Unfortunately, the very people who most need protection from the flu also have immune systems that are least likely to respond to vaccine. Studies show that young, healthy people mount a glorious immune response to seasonal flu vaccine, and their response reduces their chances of getting the flu and may lessen the severity of symptoms if they do get it. But they aren’t the people who die from seasonal flu. By contrast, the elderly, particularly those over age70, don’t have a good immune response to vaccine—and they’re the ones who account for most flu deaths.

In Jefferson’s view, this raises a troubling conundrum: Is vaccine necessary for those in whom it is effective, namely the young and healthy? Conversely, is it effective in those for whom it seems to be necessary, namely the old, the very young, and the infirm? These questions have led to the most controversial aspect of Jefferson’s work: his call for placebo-controlled trials, studies that would randomly give half the test subjects vaccine and the other half a dummy shot, or placebo. Only such large, well-constructed, randomized trials can show with any precision how effective vaccine really is, and for whom.

In the flu-vaccine world, Jefferson’s call for placebo-controlled studies is considered so radical that even some of his fellow skeptics oppose it. Majumdar, the Ottawa researcher, says he believes that evidence of a benefit among children is established and that public-health officials should try to protect seniors by immunizing children, health-care workers, and other people around them, and thus reduce the spread of the flu. Lone Simonsen explains the prevailing view: “It is considered unethical to do trials in populations that are recommended to have vaccine,” a stance that is shared by everybody from the CDC’s Nancy Cox to Anthony Fauci at the NIH. They feel strongly that vaccine has been shown to be effective and that a sham vaccine would put test subjects at unnecessary risk of getting a serious case of the flu. In a phone interview, Fauci at first voiced the opinion that a placebo trial in the elderly might be acceptable, but he called back later to retract his comment, saying that such a trial “would be unethical.” Jefferson finds this view almost exactly backward: “What do you do when you have uncertainty? You test,” he says. “We have built huge, population-based policies on the flimsiest of scientific evidence. The most unethical thing to do is to carry on business as usual.”

[23]

[23]

I never found a reason to discount what this neurosurgeon had to say re. anything that he researched.

Swine Flu -- One of the Most Massive Cover-ups in American History
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... demic.aspx

[Sweejak]

Spanish Doctor Reveals Important Information About Swine Flu

http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/spanish- ... swine-flu/

[stickdog99]

Thimerosal causes autism: the evidence

Plus, the vaccine manufacturers' agenda

Presented in 10 minute video segments --

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpF9CRApAOo

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxrVPOaC2PQ

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xgaTLnixaM

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlBpHAguE6o

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOgFtaaoaxo

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTKL54fWOzc

Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhOVNP9j6c

Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y0YE5Wly58

[seemslikeadream]

LEAKED CFR AUDIO RECORDING!!! - How to get the public to take the h1n1 vaccine!

[whipstitch]

LEAKED CFR AUDIO RECORDING!!! - How to get the public to take the h1n1 vaccine!

I would like to hear more of the CFR meeting recording and less of the other crap. The heavy handed Alex Jones-esque production is not helping me take this seriously. Did find Laurie Garrett on the CFR website but who are the other voices? Are they from the meeting? Why are 'expose' videos so often presented in such a cartoonish way? It just assures that it will not be taken seriously by most people. CIA produced perhaps?

[23]

LEAKED CFR AUDIO RECORDING!!! - How to get the public to take the h1n1 vaccine!

The strategy works for Nintendo. Why not for the vaccine?

It's the same flock of sheep anyway.