Sverige utvärderar svininfluensan

Sweden evaluates swine flu response

Published: 17 Jan 10 10:11 CET
(www.local.se)

With more than half the population inoculated, the swine flu scare is waning in Sweden. But questions remain whether the epidemic was grossly exaggerated.

Links:

Swine flu named year's top Swedish news story (30 Dec 09) 

Sweden’s swine flu response wins EU praise (4 Dec 09) 

Spread of swine flu in Sweden slowing down: official (26 Nov 09)

“We’re definitely evaluating our initiatives, together with other countries,” said epidemiologist Annika Linde at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitut). “But we’ve saved lives. That’s perfectly clear.” 

She made her comments in the Swedish daily Expressen in response to charges that the World Health Organization (WHO) exaggerated the risks.

Sweden ordered 18 million doses of vaccine but has used only about 7 million when it became clear that a single inoculation, rather than two, would suffice.

Some 15 Swedes have died from swine flu since the announcement of the pandemic last summer. 

“With hindsight it’s easy to be critical, and there’s no doubt that this influenza was milder than we had believed,” said Linde. WHO did not exaggerate the risks, she said, but instead adopted the principle of protective action.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has praised the Swedish campaign to combat the disease. The H1N1 virus has been called swine flu because many of the genes are similar to influenza viruses found in pigs. The epidemic was first detected last year, originally in Mexico and theUnited States.

Comments

January 17, 2010 by digital

I admire the people behind the swine flu who made trillions overnight :)

January 17, 2010 by Gwrhyr

It was incredibly grossly exaggerated and I'm glad I wasn't inoculated, but you know what? I don't think there is any way to "win" in these types of situations. If Swine flu ended up being the next plague, wiping out a quarter of Sweden's population the evaluations and reactions would be that we didn't do enough. 

Certainly the big money in the pharmaceutical industry plays this reality to their advantage. So it's really a complicated question. But we can say now that yes, this particular case turns out to have been exaggerated.

Have to agree with Gwhyr. And right now in the labs in some pharmaceutical company they are working on next year's donkey fly

by eggbrain It was put to me that I might not be allowed to be present at the birth of my next child in February if I refused the injection. I always thought that swine flu was a load of crap but, they had me over a barrel. I still feel really annoyed about having my arm twisted in this way.

The swine flue was a great way for pharmacutical companies to scare people into making record profits during an economic crises. But then again we are scared into alot of things.... Terrorism, Fluism, Islamism, blah blah blahism.... I made the last one up but lets see how the media will take it and create hysteria about it.

Here is a great piece of advice I was given during my university years by a political profressor I had my first year..."If the government is telling you to do something, question it because most likely then not they don't about they just want to use you for a greater plan.

Bottom line, no one knew whether this virus would mutate into a very deadly strain like the 1918 flu did. The vaccine might not give perfect protection if that happened, but it could still reduce the viral load and help people fight off the infection.

January 18, 2010 by Davey-jo

When an itsy bitsy little flu bug bothers Western capitalist society all the stops are pulled to get a vaccine; cost no problem; just get it and fast. When a bug is killing millions of, let us say, slightly darker skinned individuals nobody is in any hurry at all. Swine flu may or may not have killed a few hundred; malaria has killed thousands at the same time and no-body really cares. If you needed an example of racism then this is it; brutal indifference to every day killer diseases.

You could also read in the Swedish newspapers that fewer people are suffering from the common cold this winter; just because people have become better at washing their hands after the swine-flu scare.

As the media says that the swine flu virus was constructed in a lab and the swine flu vaccin was patented six months prior to the first cases of swine flu appeared in the nature and then turned into a pandemic, the pharma industries which arranged this crime must be sued. Who is going to sue them? If noone, why not?