Serious underlying rubbish
So, now seven people have died in the UK from swine flu. And seven times the mainstream media have duly repeated the government’s contention that the dead suffered from ’serious underlying health problems’. The clear implication is, were it not for these serious problems, the dead wouldn’t have died.
Having heard the same thing over and over, though, one could be forgiven for becoming suspicious.
When a government says the same line over and over, they’re trying to influence the way you think. And when the press repeat that line without investigating it, that’s your propaganda machine, right there.
Ministry of Disinformation
Propaganda. Not a word we’re used to seeing in the modern age, but these are interesting times.
Britain is ‘well placed’ to survive the recession. Britain is ‘one of the most prepared countries in the world‘ to handle swine flu. The recession ‘started in America‘.
You heard those over and over and over again, right? Each one repeated by the government and the media blankly. Each one a little piece of propaganda.
The International Monetary Fund later said Britain was the worst positioned in Europe to survive the recession. Britain now has the most cases of swine flu in all of Europe. Among the most egregious sub-prime lenders were European banks including Barclays and Deutsche Bank.
Let’s get serious
The Centrist, no doubt like you, takes the word ’serious’ seriously. If you say a dead person had serious health problems, I tend to think, ‘Hmm, HIV positive? Terminal cancer? Multiple Sclerosis? Parkinsons Disease?’
Nah, how about asthma, diabetes or epilepsy? All rarely fatal, eminently treatable health conditions.
(And can somebody please tell the British press that the word ‘fit’ is as archaic as ’swoon’ and in its own way as wrong as ’spastic’? The modern term is ’seizure’.)
I know people with every single one of those mild health conditions, and I’ll bet you do too. I myself have asthma, which the government, through the National Health Service, has treated with an almost devil-may-care lack of concern, tossing me an inhaler when it first flared up a couple of years ago and telling me to let them know if I was ‘worried’ about it.
Now I know that if I die of swine flu, the government will use my asthma to explain it, as part of its propaganda, so that you can continue to think swine flu is just a bad cold. They’ll put on their sad faces, look moist-eyed at the BBC camera and talk about my serious health problems.
Let me tell you now: my asthma is mild. It should never, ever kill me. I have had flu several times and survived just fine. I’m just a bit of a hypochondriac, really. Not terminal. Not serious. Ought to live.
Here’s the truth
The government’s inability to get a handle on swine flu, it’s failure to take it seriously enough and to properly educate the population about it, it’s failure to encourage self-quarantining as other countries have, the fact that it has not encouraged people to work from home and the fact that it did not ask them to stay out of crowded places, allowed the virus to spread out of control.
Because of all of that, those seven vulnerable people caught the virus through no fault of their own, and now they’re dead.
Rest in peace
Increasingly there are murmurs outside of the mainstream press that this government doesn’t understand how epidemics work.
But I believe it’s more callous and soul-chilling than that. I think the government doesn’t want you to know how serious the situation is, because then you might lose faith in them. You might support the Labour party even less than you already do. You might vote against them in the next election.
And that genuinely appears to be all that matters to them. Or at least, that’s what matters most.
So the propaganda machine swings into motion, and it keeps telling you everything’s Ok. You probably still think swine flu’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a mild flu or a bad cold. The young and healthy will be just fine. Right?
Who told you that?
The government and the press. And you believed them.
Did you know that swine flu disproportionately impacts the young and healthy? It’ll kill you if you’re old or ill, but it almost prefers to kill the young and healthy. The British government doesn’t want you to know that. You need to know that. Everything is not going to be Ok.
Google it
Again I say: Don’t believe this government. It’s scared. And scared, bad governments lie.
And don’t trust the mainstream press: it’s slow on the uptake.
Do your own research. And be careful out there.
Don’t worry: it’s all under control
I love everything about the story in the Times this week about the swine flu epidemic raging so far out of control that the government has given up its outstanding work containing it.
I use the word ‘outstanding’ because I think that’s the word they’d use. And The Centrist is nothing if not supportive.
According to the Times, Health Secretary Andy Burnham says it’s all going to plan. (By the way, did you ever wonder how his background qualifies him for this job? Well, he’s got a degree in English from Cambridge, and he’s a keen cricketer and an MP. What more health experience do you want during a deadly pandemic?)
Mr Burnham said: ‘Our approach has focused on containing the spread and working with the local NHS to identify cases, isolate them as quickly as possible, treat them with antivirals and treat those around them and offer prophylactic treatment to those around them. This is very resource-intensive, but it has been highly successful.’
Yes, the government’s containment plan worked so well that Mr Burnham’s quote was in a news article entitled: ‘Swine flu spreads so rapidly it cannot be contained’.
The same article noted: ‘The number of confirmed cases in Scotland increased by 111 yesterday — the largest one-day rise since the outbreak began.’
If that’s containment working well, I’d hate to see it working badly.
I can see why they’re stopping it.
A personal story
Let’s take a closer look at the government’s containment policy.
I’ll start with a personal example: a friend’s school in north London called for help after the vast majority of its students didn’t show show up last week - all were home with fevers. In my friend’s five-year-old’s class, 20 of the 25 students were ill.
The government swooped in. Those with the highest fevers were tested for swine flu. They tested positive.
The school was closed. Parents were told to pick up Tamiflu at the school, and were given no other advice about what to do. My friend went back to work, her daughter went out to play with friends. The government does not recommend not doing this, by the way. They recommend nothing if you are not personally exhibiting symptoms, even if you have been exposed to the virus in an up-close-and-personal way.
In its early stages, swine flu has such mild symptoms you could mistake it for hay fever or a cold. But during that time you will be spreading the flu to potentially vulnerable people.
This might go some way toward explaining why the government’s containment policy didn’t work. Or rather, why it worked so spectacularly well that swine flu is now raging out of control.
There’s more, though.
My friend wasn’t particularly worried about the whole thing, but she wanted her daughter swabbed just to reassure her that she did not have flu. But the health authorities refused to do it. They told her no further swabbing was happening at her school. Even those whose children had mild symptoms were told they could not be tested.
So out of, say, 100 children at her child’s school who probably contracted swine flu, only a handful were added to the government’s chart of verified cases, because the government refused to test the rest of them.
Now, the government’s numbers show that around 3,000 people have had swine flu in the UK so far.
But if you extrapolate the situation at my friend’s school out to a national level – if the government is only swabbing a fraction of those exposed to the virus country-wide, in other words – it’s possible, even likely, that 10,000 people or more have already had this disease.
Save yourselves
I suggest all readers take a look at how other governments are handling the outbreak, because I’ll tell you what the government won’t: this epidemic is going to knock us all on our arses this autumn. We could be left with empty offices, closed shops, a decimated workforce.
Other governments are urging their populations to stockpile enough food to feed their families for at least two weeks in case stores are closed if the staff become ill, or in case they themselves become ill suddenly. If you contract swine flu and you have to go to the store for bread, you will spread the virus. Just ilke that.
Other governments ask parents to self-quarantine for seven days if their child’s school is closed because of swine flu – in case their child has the flu but has not yet shown symptoms.
Other governments are taking this seriously.
As far as I can tell, the British government’s entire swine flu plan is Tamiflu. Don’t worry, they keep saying, we have Tamiflu.
Tamiflu has a mild palliative effect in some cases if given in the first day or two of the virus.
That’s all we got, people.
And the NHS seems to be hinting that we don’t actually have that much of it.
If you stop and think about it – if you, for example, read the Wikipedia page about the swine flu epidemic of 1918 – that should scare the hell out of you.
But the government, well, it’s got it all under control. You can tell that by way in which the virus is spreading like wildfire.
No need to worry.
