Why is the CDC at the forefront of disease scare mongering?
The CDC seems to be working hard to "create" fear that we will soon have a human-to-human bird flu pandemic when none exists and, by its own admission, the risk of that occurring naturally is low. (In 2009 the WHO redefined pandemic "to mean even mild illness and low numbers of deaths." The WHO IHR amendments which are scheduled to go into effect March 2025 for countries that do not object to them, as discussed below, only refer to a "pandemic emergency" which is a now a communicable disease, with no morbidity or mortality requirement.) Flu fear mongering is not new to the CDC, however. It created a playbook to increase flu vaccine demand in 2004 and pulled it out in 2020 for COVID-19. Are they using it again to scare monger the public into believing that a non-existent bird flu pandemic is on the horizon?
CDC scare mongers to create flu vaccine demand
Instructs media on how to do it
In 2004, Glen Nowak, CDC Acting Director of Media Relations and Associate Director for Communications, NIP (National Immunization Program)/CDC, prepared a PowerPoint (PPT) presentation to instruct the media on the best method of scare mongering the public into creating demand for flu vaccines. Entitled "Increasing Awareness and Uptake of Influenza Vaccines," it featured a 7-step "Recipe for Fostering Public Interest and High Vaccine Demand." Following are some of the pointers that the media received directly from the CDC on how to manipulate the public to create unwarranted fear and anxiety.
Items 3 and 4 of the "Recipe" (page 3) advise using authority figures to predict dire consequences and to create the perception that the flu is causing more severe, even deadly, illness than the year before:
> Getting medical experts and public health authorities to “publicly … state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) — and urge influenza vaccination”
> Publishing media articles and reports saying “that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people, helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza” and “framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or past years,’ ‘deadly’)
The section titled: "Implications of the Recipe" provides instructions about the need to create panic among those who don't ordinarily vaccinate.
Fostering demand, particularly among people who don't routinely receive an annual influenza vaccination, requires creating concern, anxiety, and worry. For example:
> A perception or sense that many people are falling ill;
> A perception or sense that many people are experiencing bad illness;
> A perception or sense of vulnerability to contracting and experiencing bad illness.
A scary influenza warning
Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Nowak included cartoons in the PPT (below) directing the media on just how to do it. The top image is an original Tim Toles "terror warning" cartoon (page 14 in the PPT) and the bottom image is Nowak's "modification," turning it into an "influenza warning" (page 15 in the PT). Nowak wanted readers to be afraid of the flu just enough to get vaccinated, but not too afraid since they don't want everyone coming at once.
So be afraid. But not too afraid.
CDC disinforms about flu deaths
In an Influenza Request for Correction to the CDC, Pediatrician Dr. Kenneth Stoller objected to the way the US classifies flu deaths as false and misleading. He criticized the CDC's lumping secondary pneumonia deaths with the flu, observing that the agency does not report in this way in other cases where pneumonia is a secondary pneumonia:
US data on influenza deaths are false and misleading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably. Additionally, there are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear—a CDC communications strategy in which medical experts "predict dire outcomes" during flu seasons.
The CDC website states what has become commonly accepted and widely reported in the lay and scientific press: annually "about 36 000 [Americans] die from flu" (www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease.htm) and "influenza/pneumonia" is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States (www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm). But why are flu and pneumonia bundled together? Is the relationship so strong or unique to warrant characterizing them as a single cause of death?
David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services, said, "People don't necessarily die, per se, of the [flu] virus—the viraemia. What they die of is a secondary pneumonia. So many of these pneumonias are not viral pneumonias but secondary [pneumonias]." But Dr. Rosenthal agreed that the flu/pneumonia relationship was not unique. For instance, a recent study (JAMA 2004;292: 1955-60[Abstract/Free Full Text]) found that stomach acid suppressing drugs are associated with a higher risk of community acquired pneumonia, but such drugs and pneumonia are not compiled as a single statistic.
CDC states that the historic 1968-9 "Hong Kong flu" pandemic killed 34,000 Americans. At the same time, CDC claims 36,000 Americans annually die from flu. What is going on?
CDC a$ding Big Pharma?
Dr. Stoller next took issue with another of Nowak's propaganda pieces published by the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services - its "Seven-Step `Recipe' for Generating Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination" and the reason Nowak gave for producing it, as he stated during an interview with NPR. Dr. Stoller clariied that biased statistics limits the possibility of proper public health policy.
Preceding the summit, demand had been low early into the 2003 flu season. "At that point, the manufacturers were telling us that they weren't receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December," recalled Dr Nowak on National Public Radio. "It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot." If flu is in fact not a major cause of death, this public relations approach is surely exaggerated. Moreover, by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased. Until corrected and until unbiased statistics are developed, the chances for sound discussion and public health policy are limited.
CDC flu propaganda harmful
Dr. Stoller stated that the propaganda has real affects on real people.
I am a pediatrician and this propaganda affects my practice directly.
CDC used the "Recipe" for COVID, too?
This "Recipe" must have worked very well in generating substantial fear and successfully increased demand for the flu vaccine, since it appeared that the CDC repurposed it for COVID-19.
X user Covid-1984 noted the similarities between the CDC's "Recipe for Fostering Public Interest and High Vaccine Demand" for the flu and the way in which the CDC and the media were promoting fear of COVID-19.
CDC repurposing its "Recipe" for bird flu?
After all the decades during which bird-flu was claimed to be decimating birds, there has never been a natural mutation that saw bird flu jump from human to human. The CDC, however, is now trying hard to create the perception that such a scenario has the potential to occur in the near future. Seems like the CDC has not wasted time in repurposing the "Recipe" for bird flu just in time for the upcoming March 2025 deadline for ratification of the WHO's IHR amendments.
Perhaps recipes are better left for the kitchen.
Related articles:
- WHO no longer needs a pandemic to declare one
- Creating Pandemics 101: Propaganda mastermind reveals secret tactics
