Truth about Swine Flu, Vaccines, & Natural Immune Protection (READ THIS)

note: I say READ THIS only if you or people around you are susceptible to propaganda and fear that might cause them to take a swine flu vaccine. If you are immune to that fear, then you still will find this educational.
The advice he gives at the end for protection is all sound, and of course is amplified 100-fold if you are practicing qigong and inner alchemy.
Michael

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CRITICAL ALERT: THE SWINE FLU PANDEMIC – FACT OR FICTION?
mercola.com
April 29, 2009

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx

American health officials declared a public health emergency as cases of
swine flu were confirmed in the U.S. Health officials across the world fear
this could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico,
where seven people are confirmed dead as a result of the new virus.

On Wednesday April 29th, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised its
pandemic alert level to five on its six-level threat scale, which means
they’ve determined that the virus is capable of human-to-human transmission.
The initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection already
traveling at higher velocity than did the last official pandemic strain, the
1968 Hong Kong flu.

Phase 5 had never been declared since the warning system was introduced in
2005 in response to the avian influenza crisis. Phase 6 means a pandemic is
under way.

Several nations have imposed travel bans, or made plans to quarantine air
travelers that present symptoms of the swine flu despite the fact that WHO
now openly states it is not possible to contain the spread of this infection
and recommends mitigation measures, not restricting travel or closing
borders.

Just What is a Pandemic Anyway?

A pandemic does not necessarily mean what you think it does, it is NOT
black-plague carts being hauled through the streets piled high with dead
bodies. Nor does it mean flesh eating zombies wandering the streets feeding
on the living. All a pandemic means is that a new infectious disease is
spreading throughout the world.

By definition, a “pandemic” is an epidemic that is geographically
widespread. Fear-mongers are always careful to add the innuendo that
millions of people could and probably will die, as in the Spanish Flu
pandemic of 1918 that killed about 20 million people worldwide.

How does the death of even a few hundred equate to 20 million?

Much Fear Mongering Being Promoted

I suspect you have likely been alarmed by the media’s coverage of the swine
flu scare. It has a noticeable subplot — preparing you for draconian
measures to combat a future pandemic as well as forcing you to accept the
idea of mandatory vaccinations.

On April 27, Time magazine published an article which discusses how dozens
died and hundreds were injured from vaccines as a result of the 1976 swine
flu fiasco <http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1894129,00.html>,
when the Ford administration attempted to use the infection of soldiers at
Fort Dix as a pretext for a mass vaccination of the entire country.

Despite acknowledging that the 1976 farce was an example of “how not to
handle a flu outbreak”, the article still introduces the notion that
officials “may soon have to consider whether to institute draconian measures
to combat the disease”.

Fear has become so widespread that Egypt has ordered the slaughter of the
country’s 300,000 pigs, even though no cases have been reported there.

Fortunately some respectable journalists recognize this and are seeking to
spread a voice of reason to the fear that is being promoted in the majority
of the media

This is NOT the First Swine Flu Panic

My guess is that you can expect to see a lot of panic over this issue in the
near future. But the key is to remain calm — this isn’t the first time the
public has been warned about swine flu. The last time was in 1976, right
before I entered medical school and I remember it very clearly. It resulted
in the massive swine flu vaccine campaign.

Do you happen to recall the result of this massive campaign?

Within a few months, claims totaling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims
who had suffered paralysis from the vaccine. The vaccine was also blamed for
25 deaths.

However, several hundred people developed crippling Guillain-Barré Syndrome
after they were injected with the swine flu vaccine. Even healthy
20-year-olds ended up as paraplegics.

And the swine flu pandemic itself? It never materialized.

More People Died From the Swine Flu Vaccine than Swine Flu!

It is very difficult to forecast a pandemic, and a rash response can be
extremely damaging.

To put things into perspective, malaria kills 3,000 people EVERY DAY, and
it’s considered “a health problem”… But of course, there are no fancy
vaccines for malaria that can rake in billions of dollars in a short amount
of time.

One Australian news source, for example, states that even a mild swine flu
epidemic could lead to the deaths of 1.4 million people and would reduce
economic growth by nearly $5 trillion dollars.

Give me a break, if this doesn’t sound like the outlandish cries of the
pandemic bird-flu I don’t know what does. Do you remember when President
Bush said two million Americans would die as a result of the bird flu?

In 2005, in 2006, 2007, and again in 2008, those fears were exposed as
little more than a cruel hoax, designed to instill fear, and line the
pocketbooks of various individuals and industry. I became so convinced by
the evidence AGAINST the possibility of a bird flu pandemic that I wrote a
New York Times bestselling book, The Bird Flu Hoax, all about the massive
fraud involved with the epidemic that never happened.

What is the Swine Flu?

Regular swine flu is a contagious respiratory disease, caused by a type-A
influenza virus that affects pigs. The current strain, A(H1N1), is a new
variation of an H1N1 virus — which causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans
— that also contains genetic material of bird and pig versions of the flu.

Symptoms include:

* Fever of more than 100
* Coughing
* Runny nose and/or sore throat
* Joint aches
* Severe headache
* Vomiting and/or diarrhea
* Lethargy
* Lack of appetite

Interestingly enough, this version has never before been seen in neither
human nor animal, which I will discuss a bit later.

This does sound bad. But not so fast. There are a few reasons to not rush to
conclusions that this is the deadly pandemic we’ve been told would occur in
the near future (as if anyone could predict it without having some sort of
inside knowledge).

Current State of Swine Flu Spread

As of May 1, 2009, 11 countries have officially reported 363 cases of
influenza A(H1N1) infection and only ten deaths in the ENTIRE world from
this illness. At this time ALL of the deaths are from people born in Mexico.

Why Mexico? Well overcrowding, poor nutrition and overall poor immunity,
all of which are indigenous to Mexico will radically increase your risk of
death from almost any infection.

Interestingly there are no official reports of just who these people are
that died. Are they elderly or infirm people, are they already chronically
ill? Are they under 5 years old? Or perhaps someone who could just as easily
be killed by the common cold or a slip and fall? These are important
questions that have not been answered.

The number of fatalities, and suspected and confirmed cases across the world
change depending on the source, so your best bet — if you want the latest
numbers — is to use Google Maps’ Swine Flu Tracker. There is also an
experimental version for Mexico.

But “officially’ the most recent numbers according to the World Health
Organization’s Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response site are:

Country Cases Deaths

Mexico 156 9
United States 141 1*
Canada 34 0
Spain 13 0
United Kingdom 8 0
Germany 3 0
New Zealand 3 0
Israel 2 0
Switzerland 1 0
Austria 1 0
Netherlands 1 0

*The United States has had 141 confirmed cases, and one death BUT no deaths
from US Citizens. On April 29th CNN reported the first swine fatality in the
US, however this was actually a child from Mexico that died in Texas.

It is important to note that nearly all suspected new cases have been
reported as mild.

Personally, I am highly skeptical. It simply doesn’t add up to a real
pandemic.

But it does raise serious questions about where this brand new, never before
seen virus came from, especially since it cannot be contracted from eating
pork products, and has never before been seen in pigs, and contains traits
from the bird flu — and which, so far, only seems to respond to Tamiflu.
Are we just that lucky, or… what?

Your Fear Will Make Some People VERY Rich in Today’s Crumbling Economy

Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) is approved for treatment of uncomplicated
influenza A and B in children 1 year of age or older. It is also approved
for prevention of influenza in people 13 years or older. It’s part of a
group of anti-influenza drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors, which work by
blocking a viral enzyme that helps the influenza virus to invade cells in
your respiratory tract.

According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates
up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future — and that’s
without a pandemic outbreak.

More than half a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including Gilead Sciences
Inc., Roche, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies with a stake in flu
treatments and detection, have seen a rise in their shares in a matter of
days, and will likely see revenue boosts if the swine flu outbreak continues
to spread.

Swine flue is extremely convenient for governments that would have very soon
have to dispose of billions of dollars of Tamiflu stock, which they bought
to counter avian flu, or H5N1. The US government ordered 20 million doses,
costing $2 billion, in October, 2005, and around that time the UK government
ordered 14.6 million doses. Tamiflu’s manufacturer, Roche, has confirmed
that the shelf life of its anti-viral is three years.

As soon as Homeland Security declared a health emergency, 25 percent —
about 12 million doses — of Tamiflu and Relenza treatment courses were
released from the nation’s stockpile. However, beware that the declaration
also allows unapproved tests and drugs to be administered to children. Many
health and government officials are more than willing to take that chance
with your life, and the life of your child. But are you?

Tamiflu Loaded With Side Effects, Including Death and Can Only Reduce
Symptoms by 36 Hours at BEST

Please realize that Tamiflu is NOT a safe drug Serious side effects include
convulsions, delirium or delusions, and 14 deaths in children and teens as a
result of neuropsychiatric problems and brain infections. Japan actually
banned Tamiflu for children in 2007.

Remember, Tamiflu went through some rough times not too long ago, as the
dangers of this drug came to light when, in 2007, the FDA finally began
investigating some 1,800 adverse event reports related to the drug:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/03/15/tamiflu-s-effe
cts-on-your-brain.aspx

Additionally common side effects of Tamiflu include:

* Nausea
* Vomiting
* Diarrhea
* Headache
* Dizziness
* Fatigue
* Cough

All in all, the very symptoms you’re trying to avoid.

Additionally, Tamiflu has been reported to be ineffective against seasonal
flu outbreaks, and may not be sufficient to combat an epidemic or pandemic.

But making matters worse, some patients with influenza are at HIGHER risk
for secondary bacterial infections when on Tamiflu. And secondary bacterial
infections, as I mentioned earlier, was likely the REAL cause of the mass
fatalities during the 1918 pandemic!

But here’s the real kicker.

When Tamiflu is used as directed (twice daily for 5 days) it can ONLY reduce
the duration of your influenza symptoms by 1 to 1 1⁄2 days, according to the
official data.

Why on earth would anyone want to take a drug that has a chance of killing
you, was banned in Japan, is loaded with side effects that mimic the flu
itself, costs over $100, and AT BEST can only provide 36 hours of SYMPTOM
relief. Just doesn’t make any sense.

Should You Accept a Flu Vaccine — Just to be Safe?

As stated in the New York Times and elsewhere, flu experts have no idea
whether the current seasonal flu vaccine would offer any protection
whatsoever against this exotic mutant, and it will take months to create a
new one.

But let me tell you, getting vaccinated now would not only offer no
protection and potentially cause great harm, it would most likely be loaded
with toxic mercury which is used as a preservative in most flu vaccines.

I’ve written extensively about the numerous dangers (and ineffectiveness) of
flu vaccines, and why I do not recommend them to anyone
<http://bit.ly/E2hjC>. So no matter what you hear — even if it comes from
your doctor — don’t get a regular flu shot. They rarely work against
seasonal flu…and certainly can’t offer protection against a never-before-
seen strain.

Currently, the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza are the only drugs that
appear effective against the (human flu) H1N1 virus, and I strongly believe
taking Tamiflu to protect yourself against this new virus could be a serious
mistake — for all the reasons I already mentioned above.

But in addition to the dangerous side effects of Tamiflu, there is also
growing evidence of resistance against the drug. In February, the
pre-publication and preliminary findings journal called Nature Precedings
published a paper on this concern, stating:

“The dramatic rise of oseltamivir [Tamiflu] resistance in the H1N1 serotype
in the 2007/2008 season and the fixing of H274Y in the 2008/2009 season has
raised concerns regarding individuals at risk for seasonal influenza, as
well as development of similar resistance in the H5N1 serotype [bird flu].

“Previously, oseltamivir resistance produced changes in H1N1 and H3N2 at
multiple positions in treated patients. In contrast, the recently reported
resistance involved patients who had not recently taken oseltamivir.”

It’s one more reason not to bother with this potentially dangerous drug.

And, once a specific swine flu drug is created, you can be sure that it has
not had the time to be tested in clinical trials to determine safety and
effectiveness, which puts us right back where I started this article — with
a potential repeat of the last dangerous swine flu vaccine, which destroyed
the lives of hundreds of people.

Topping the whole mess off, of course, is the fact that if the new vaccine
turns out to be a killer, the pharmaceutical companies responsible are
immune from lawsuits — something I’ve also warned about before on numerous
occasions.

Unfortunately, those prospects won’t stop the governments of the world from
mandating the vaccine — a scenario I hope we can all avoid.

How to Protect Yourself Without Dangerous Drugs and Vaccinations

For now, my point is that there are always going to be threats of flu
pandemics, real or created, and there will always be potentially toxic
vaccines that are peddled as the solution. But you can break free of that
whole drug-solution trap by following some natural health principles.

I have not caught a flu in over two decades, and you can avoid it too,
without getting vaccinated, by following these simple guidelines, which will
keep your immune system in optimal working order so that you’re far less
likely to acquire the infection to begin with.

* Optimize your vitamin D levels. As I’ve previously reported, optimizing
your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding
infections of ALL kinds, and vitamin D deficiency is likely the TRUE culprit
behind the seasonality of the flu — not the flu virus itself.

This is probably the single most important and least expensive action you
can take. I would STRONGLY urge you to have your vitamin D level monitored
to confirm your levels are therapeutic at 50-70 ng.ml and done by a reliable
vitamin D lab like Lab Corp.

For those of you in the US we hope to launch a vitamin D testing service
through Lab Corp that allows you to have your vitamin D levels checked at
your local blood drawing facility, and relatively inexpensively. We hope to
offer this service by June 2009.

If you are coming down with flu like symptoms and have not been on vitamin D
you can take doses of 50,000 units a day for three days to treat the acute
infection. Some researchers like Dr. Cannell, believe the dose could even be
as high as 1000 units per pound of body weight for three days.

However, most of Dr. Cannell’s work was with seasonal and not pandemic flu.
If your body has never been exposed to the antigens there is chance that the
vitamin D might not work. However the best bet is to maintain healthy levels
of vitamin D around 60 ng/ml.

BUT to keep this in perspective the regular flu, not the swine flu, has
killed 13,000 in the US since January. But there is strong support that
these types of figures are grossly exaggerated to increase vaccine sales.
However, the fact remains that the regular flu at this point in time is FAR
more dangerous than the swine flu and were you worried about the regular flu
before the media started talking this up?

* Avoid Sugar and Processed Foods. Sugar decreases the function of your
immune system almost immediately, and as you likely know, a strong immune
system is key to fighting off viruses and other illness. Be aware that sugar
is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice.

* Get Enough Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily
tasks done if you’re tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be
harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a
Good Night’s Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.

* Have Effective Tools to Address Stress. We all face some stress every day,
but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight
off the flu and other illness.

If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an
energy psychology tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which
is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of
events, from work to family to trauma. You can check out my free, 25-page
EFT manual for some guidelines on how to perform EFT.

* Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood
flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also
better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of
finding an illness before it spreads. You can review my exercise guidelines
for some great tips on how to get started.

* Take a good source of animal based omega-3 fats like Krill Oil. Increase
your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill
oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also vitally important
to avoid damaged omega-6 oils that are trans fats and in processed foods as
it will seriously damage your immune response.

* Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of
spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don’t use
antibacterial soap for this — antibacterial soaps are completely
unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a
simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.

* Eat Garlic Regularly. Garlic works like a broad-spectrum antibiotic
against bacteria, virus, and protozoa in the body. And unlike with
antibiotics, no resistance can be built up so it is an absolutely safe
product to use. However, if you are allergic or don’t enjoy garlic it would
be best to avoid as it will likely cause more harm than good.

* Avoid Hospitals and Vaccines In this particular case, I’d also recommend
you stay away from hospitals unless you’re having an emergency, as hospitals
are prime breeding grounds for infections of all kinds, and could be one of
the likeliest places you could be exposed to this new bug. Vaccines will not
be available for six months at the minimum but when available they will be
ineffective and can lead to crippling paralysis like Guillain-Barré Syndrome
just as it did in the 70s.

Factory Farming Maybe Source of Swine Flu

Another theory as to the cause of Swine Flu might be factory farming. In the
United States, pigs travel coast to coast. They can be bred in North
Carolina, fattened in the corn belt of Iowa, and slaughtered in California.

While this may reduce short-term costs for the pork industry, the highly
contagious nature of diseases like influenza (perhaps made further
infectious by the stresses of transport) needs to be considered when
calculating the true cost of long-distance live animal transport.

The majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each.
With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus shows up it will have more
opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs
on a small farm.

With massive concentrations of farm animals within which to mutate, these
new swine flu viruses in North America seem to be on an evolutionary fast
track, jumping and reassorting between species at an unprecedented rate.

Why a True Bird- or Swine Flu Pandemic is HIGHLY Unlikely

While in my opinion it is highly likely factory farming is responsible for
producing this viral strain, I believe there is still no cause for concern.

You may not know this, but all H1N1 flu’s are descendants of the 1918
pandemic strain. The reason why the flu shot may or may not work, however,
from year to year, is due to mutations. Therefore, there’s no vaccine
available for this current hybrid flu strain, and naturally, this is feeding
the fear that millions of people will die before a vaccine can be made.

However, let me remind you of one very important fact here.

Just a couple of months ago, scientists concluded that the 1918 flu pandemic
that killed between 50-100 million people worldwide in a matter of 18 months
— which all these worst case scenarios are built upon — was NOT due to the
flu itself!

Instead, they discovered the real culprit was strep infections.

People with influenza often get what is known as a “superinfection” with a
bacterial agent. In 1918 it appears to have been Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Since strep is much easier to treat than the flu using modern medicine, a
new pandemic would likely be much less dire than it was in the early 20th
century, the researchers concluded.

Others, such as evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald,5 claim that a pandemic of
this sort simply cannot happen, because in order for it to occur, the world
has to change. Not the virus itself, but the world.

In a previous interview for Esquire magazine, in which he discusses the
possibility of a bird flu pandemic, he states:

“They think that if a virus mutates, it’s an evolutionary event. Well, the
virus is mutating because that is what viruses and other pathogens do. But
evolution is not just random mutation. It is random mutation coupled with
natural selection; it is a battle for competitive advantage among different
strains generated by random mutation.

“For bird flu to evolve into a human pandemic, the strain that finds a home
in humanity has to be a strain that is both highly virulent and highly
transmissible. Deadliness has to translate somehow into popularity; H5N1 has
to find a way to kill or immobilize its human hosts, and still find other
hosts to infect. Usually that doesn’t happen.”

Ewald goes on to explain that evolution in general is all about trade-offs,
and in the evolution of infections the trade-off is between virulence and
transmissibility.

What this means is that in order for a “bird flu” or “swine flu” to turn
into a human pandemic, it has to find an environment that favors both deadly
virulence and ease of transmission.

People living in squalor on the Western Front at the end of World War I
generated such an environment, from which the epidemic of 1918 could arise.

Likewise, crowded chicken farms, slaughterhouses, and jam-packed markets of
eastern Asia provide another such environment, and that environment gave
rise to the bird flu — a pathogen that both kills and spreads, in birds,
but not in humans.

Says Ewald:

“We know that H5N1 is well adapted to birds. We also know that it has a hard
time becoming a virus that can move from person to person. It has a hard
time without our doing anything. But we can make it harder. We can make sure
it has no human population in which to evolve transmissibility. There is no
need to rely on the mass extermination of chickens. There is no need to
stockpile vaccines for everyone.

“By vaccinating just the people most at risk — the people who work with
chickens and the caregivers — we can prevent it from becoming transmissible
among humans. Then it doesn’t matter what it does in chickens.”

Please remember that, despite the fantastic headlines and projections of
MILLIONS of deaths, the H5N1 bird flu virus killed a mere 257 people
worldwide since late 2003. As unfortunate as those deaths are, 257 deaths
worldwide from any disease, over the course of five years, simply does not
constitute an emergency worthy of much attention, let alone fear!

Honestly, your risk of being killed by a lightning strike in the last five
years was about 2,300 percent higher than your risk of contracting and dying
from the bird flu.6 I’m not kidding! In just one year (2004), more than
1,170 people died from lighting strikes, worldwide.

So please, as the numbers of confirmed swine flu cases are released, keep a
level head and don’t let fear run away with your brains.

Where did This Mysterious New Animal-Human Flu Strain Come From?

Alongside the fear-mongering headlines, I’ve also seen increasing numbers of
reports questioning the true nature of this virus. And rightfully so.

Could a mixed animal-human mutant like this occur naturally? And if not, who
made it, and how was it released?

Not one to dabble too deep in conspiracy theories, I don’t have to strain
very hard to find actual facts to support the notion that this may not be a
natural mutation, and that those who stand to gain have the wherewithal to
pull off such a stunt.

Just last month I reported on the story that the American pharmaceutical
company Baxter was under investigation for distributing the deadly avian flu
virus to 18 different countries as part of a seasonal flu vaccine shipment.
Czech reporters were probing to see if it may have been part of a deliberate
attempt to start a pandemic; as such a “mistake” would be virtually
impossible under the security protocols of that virus.

The H5N1 virus on its own is not very airborne. However, when combined with
seasonal flu viruses, which are more easily spread, the effect could be a
potent, airborne, deadly, biological weapon. If this batch of live bird flu
and seasonal flu viruses had reached the public, it could have resulted in
dire consequences.

There is a name for this mixing of viruses; it’s called “reassortment,” and
it is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created in the lab. Some
scientists say the most recent global outbreak — the 1977 Russian flu —
was started by a virus created and leaked from a laboratory.

Another example of the less sterling integrity of Big Pharma is the case of
Bayer, who sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting
medicine to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the
mid-1980s, even though they knew it was tainted with the AIDS virus.

So while it is morally unthinkable that a drug company would knowingly
contaminate flu vaccines with a deadly flu virus such as the bird- or swine
flu, it is certainly not impossible. It has already happened more than once.

But there seems to be no repercussions or hard feelings when industry
oversteps the boundaries of morality and integrity and enters the arena of
obscenity. Because, lo and behold, which company has been chosen to head up
efforts, along with WHO, to produce a vaccine against the Mexican swine flu?

Baxter!11 Despite the fact that ink has barely dried on the investigative
reports from their should-be-criminal “mistake” against humanity.

According to other sources,12 a top scientist for the United Nations, who
has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as
HIV/AIDS victims, has concluded that the current swine flu virus possesses
certain transmission “vectors” that suggest the new strain has been
genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.

The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine
flu virus are biological warfare agents.

In addition, Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility
that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick — the same
Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released, according
to a recent article in the Fredrick News Post. In February, the top
biodefense lab halted all its research into Ebola, anthrax, plague, and
other diseases known as “select agents,” after they discovered virus samples
that weren’t listed in its inventory and might have been switched with
something else.

References:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx