Plus or Minus 95%

I’ve been hearing the number 36,000 a lot lately.

I heard it on the radio during a “news update” on the pending swine flu pandemic. I read about it in a recent news story on the same topic.

36,000 is the number of annual U.S. deaths attributed to be caused by influenza.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that number. Several months ago I was having a conversation with my mom and the topic of the flu – and the number of deaths from it per year – came up.

She asked me if I have ever known anyone who had died of the flu.

I admitted I hadn’t.

She asked me if I thought that was odd. She then told me that during the Vietnam War, just about everyone had some sort of personal acquaintance with a soldier who had died there. A relative, a friend, a friend’s son, a kid that went to your church, a classmate; regardless of what it was, just about everyone had some sort of connection with a soldier who had been killed in Vietnam.

That was a war that lasted 10 years and resulted in around 57,000 U.S. dead. With the flu, we’re talking about 36,000 deaths every single year. What are the odds that I wouldn’t have some sort of a connection with somebody who had died from the flu at some point during my lifetime?

She also pointed out that in over 20 years as an RN working in Intensive Care Units at hospitals in several different states, she could not recall a single death from influenza.

So when I started hearing this number “36,000” again recently, I decided to do a little digging.

The first place I went was to the CDC website (http://www.cdc.gov/), which is, according to their tagline, “Your Online Source for Credible Health Information.”

Sure enough, there it was: CDC estimated that about 36,000 people died of flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States. (Source)

But there was also this little statement in the document as well: Flu-related deaths are deaths that occur in people for whom influenza infection was likely a contributor to the cause of death, but not necessarily the primary cause of death.

“Not necessarily the primary cause of death”? Isn’t that essentially the same thing as “not the cause of death”?

It also goes on to say that, Flu is a serious disease that causes illness and deaths nearly every year in the United States.

"Nearly every year"? What the heck does that mean?

Curious – and now a little suspicious as well – I dug a little deeper and found a document that listed the leading causes of death for 2005 and found the following information:

2005 Leading Causes of Death
· Heart disease: 652,091
· Cancer: 559,312
· Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
· Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
· Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
· Diabetes: 75,119
· Alzheimer's disease: 71,599
· Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001
· Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 43,901
· Septicemia: 34,136
· Suicide: 32,637
· Chronic Liver Disease & cirrhosis: 27,530
· Renal Diseases: 24,902
· Parkinsons Disease: 19,544
· Homicide: 18,124
· All others: 433,800

(Total number of deaths: 2,448,017)

Okay, we’re grouping Influenza and Pneumonia together now. Not sure why, but okay. Still, it should be safe to assume that since we have already been told that Influenza accounts for 36,000 deaths, Pneumonia would account for the other 27,001, right? After all, these aren’t conflicting sources; it’s all from the CDC.

A little more digging, however, led me to the “Final Data for 2005”. It even has the CDC logo right on the top of the page. If you scroll down to Table 10 on page 33, you’ll see the breakdown of deaths from Influenza and Pneumonia:

Influenza: 1,812
Pneumonia 61,189

Isn’t that interesting? What happened to 36,000?

Even more interesting is when you take a look at the demographic breakdown. If you do, you’ll find that of the 1,812 people who died from Influenza, 80% of them were 75 or older.

To be honest, I already knew that people died when they got old, but I didn’t realize until now that the CDC will provide estimates that are plus/minus 95% accurate, which I guess is the government equivalent to “pretty good shootin’”.

Maybe the CDC should change their tagline to “Your Online Source of Incredible Health Information”.

Did you know?: During the 1976 Swine Flu scare, only 1 person actually died from the flu, but 25 died from the vaccinations given to prevent it. (Source)

Only Human

If you’ve never heard of the term “corporate personhood” before, don’t feel bad. It’s not something that is splashed all over the news or taught as part of your average school curriculum. I had never heard the term myself until just a few years ago, and I worked for a corporation for years.

When I did hear it – and learned what it was – I was amazed.

Corporate personhood is the concept that corporations were intended to fully enjoy the legal status and protections created for human beings. In other words, in the eyes of the law, there is no difference between you and General Electric. Or Microsoft. Or Monsanto.

Below is a great article that explains corporate personhood in much more depth if you have the time & desire to read it.

Abolish Corporate Personhood

If not, below is an excerpt from the article that pretty much puts it into its proper perspective:

It is important to remember what a corporation is to understand the implications of corporate personhood for democracy. A corporation is not a real thing; it's a legal fiction, an abstraction.

You can't see or hear or touch or smell a corporation - it's just an idea that people agree to and put into writing. Because legal personhood has been conferred upon an abstraction that can be redefined at will under the law, corporations have become superhumans in our world.

A corporation can live forever. It can change its identity in a day. It can cut off parts of itself - even its head - and actually function better than before. It can also cut off parts of itself and from those parts grow new selves. It can own others of its own kind and it can merge with others of its own kind.

It doesn't need fresh air to breathe or clean water to drink or safe food to eat. It doesn't fear illness or death. It can have simultaneous residence in many different nations. It's not male, female, or even transgendered. Without giving birth it can create children and even parents.

If it's found guilty of a crime, it cannot go to prison.


I would add that it also cannot feel pain, remorse, or compassion. It is incapable of love, has no conscience, and is entirely devoid of any inherent sense of morality or ethics. It does not have the ability to discern good from evil.

And, of course, it really doesn’t care that it can’t do any of that.

There is, in fact, only one thing that a corporation does care about: its own well-being. And despite all of the things that it doesn’t need, there is one thing that is absolutely essential for it’s survival: money.

It must have a continuous – and ever increasing – supply of money in order to “live”.

And since it gets that ever increasing supply of money from us, it is absolutely essential to it’s survival that we consume what it creates – in ever increasing amounts – in order to feed it. That’s why we are called “consumers”, after all, and we’ve done our job well; to the point of going into massive personal (and governmental) debt in order to let nothing interfere with our rate of consumption.

But now imagine what would happen if one of these lifeless, soulless, unfeeling entities saw its very existence threatened; its “food supply” dwindling. To what lengths might it go to ensure its own survival, especially knowing that it can’t go to jail?

Would anything really be out of the question?

"How Scared Should We Be?"

That question is taken from the article Swine Flu: 5 Things You Need to Know About the Outbreak. Not only is it from the article, it is actually one of the 5 things that we apparently “need to know”.

Step back from this for just a second and think about that question. Have we become so dependant that we can’t even think for ourselves anymore? Do we really need someone else to not only tell us when we should be scared, but to actually tell us how scared we should be?

Now that's scary.

Here’s a question for you: If we’re no longer capable of determining our own actions and emotions, is there really any difference between us and a computer? After all, they also need someone to tell them what to do because they can’t think for themselves either (well, for now anyway).

Maybe I should go ahead and get “Dell” tattooed on my arm. I sure wish somebody would tell me if that’s okay.

Ask Your Doctor if ________ is Right for You

(I normally don’t post twice in one day, but this seemed a natural tie-in with my post from earlier today).

From Vioxx maker Merck and Co drew up doctor hit list:
Staff at US company Merck &Co emailed each other about the list of doctors - mainly researchers and academics - who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or Merck and a recommended course of action.

The email, which came out in the Federal Court in Melbourne yesterday as part of a class action against the drug company, included the words "neutralise", "neutralised" or "discredit" against some of the doctors' names.

It is also alleged the company used intimidation tactics against critical researchers, including dropping hints it would stop funding to institutions and claims it interfered with academic appointments.

"We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff.


Well, if that doesn’t sound like a benevolent organization looking out for the health & welfare of people everywhere then I just don’t know what does. Is there any reason to suspect that the other members of the “Brotherhood of Big Pharma” behave any differently?

When you have a company like this that manufactures the vaccines we pump into our children & babies (which they apparently don’t do very well either: FDA warns Merck to clean up vaccine plant), is it any wonder that some people may choose not to trust their products or to believe the drivel that constantly spews from their PR department?

Here is an excellent article on the topic of vaccines: The Judgment on Vaccines is In???

FYI - If you're interested, below is a list of vaccines that Merck manufactures:

HIB
Hepatitus A
Hepatitus B
Rotavirus
MMRII (measles, mumps, rubella)**
Chickenpox
HPV

**made with fetal cells from aborted babies

The Importance of Being Compliant

(my apologies to Oscar Wilde on the title of this post)

An article published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution back in February just caught my attention this morning. Below is the opening sentence from More Atlanta-area kids get shots after crackdown at schools:

Five months into the school year and fearing bad publicity, Atlanta Public Schools kicked 105 students out of class on Jan. 30 for failing to get vaccinations they should have had on Day One, documents show.

Interesting. So they kick the unvaccinated kids out of school. Does that strike anyone else but me as odd? Apparently this was done in the name of “safety” if the tagline SPOTLIGHT: WATCHING OUT FOR YOUR SAFETY AND POCKETBOOK posted above the article’s title is to be believed.

But that doesn’t make any sense. All of the students that were allowed to remain in school have dutifully received their vaccinations; they should have nothing to worry about, right? So if kicking out the unvaccinated children wasn’t done for the “safety” of the others, then what was it done for?

Later in the article comes this statement:
“I think the positive part of this is that all the principals, as well as the public school superintendents, now understand the importance of compliance,” said Juliet Cooper, nursing director at the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness.

Ah. There it is: compliance. Now I understand.


- excerpts from the novel “What So Proudly We Hailed”:

Girls were immunized for HPV and began getting pap smears every year starting in grade school. Everybody got at least one flu vaccine a year for whatever happened to be the biggest threat to the population at that moment, and the number of vaccinations in general required for children tripled by 2017 as new vaccines were developed for diseases that nobody had even heard of ten years before.

If you were 18 or older, you were also required to donate two pints of blood a year for the national blood bank (in addition to the increased need for the expanded healthcare system, there was still a war going on too, don’t forget).

The hospitals were numerous and clean, the nurses would always smile as they herded you through from station to station, and the doctors would all nod their heads as you answered their questions. It seemed the same as before, and yet, there was a definite underlying current that everyone seemed to pick up on even thought we were all afraid to say anything about it. A negativity that you could literally feel. Because even thought the smiles were the same as before, there was now an unspoken message that was as plain and blunt and non-negotiable as it was taboo to even mention: Shut up and take your medicine.

So we did.

The (One Hundred and Eighty) 3rd Time’s the Charm

One of the details that has come out of the recently released White House “torture” memos is the revelation that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (still in U.S. custody) was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 (which works out to an average of 6 times a day – every day – for the entire month).

Forget for a moment that this in itself is probably the best evidence you could ever put forth if you were trying to prove the complete ineffectiveness of waterboarding. What is even more insane to me is the kind of rationale that would have ever considered it to be a good idea in the first place. I mean, how does this conversation go?

CIA Interrogator #1: “Well, that was disappointing.”

CIA Interrogator #2: “Sure was. I really thought we had him that time.”

CIA #1: - - heavy sigh - -

CIA #2: “So, what do you say? One more time? It’d really be a shame to stop now after 182 only to find out later that the next one would’ve been the mother lode.”

CIA #1: [nodding] “Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. One more might just do the trick."


Nothing says “Home of the Brave” like torture.

Brainwashing 101

Question: How do you get someone to believe a lie?
Answer: Keep telling it to them over and over again.

Don’t believe it? Then answer this: What document does the term “separation of church and state” come from? If you said the U.S. Constitution, you’re wrong. Nowhere in the Constitution or any of the amendments can the phrase “separation of church and state” be found.

So where does that phrase come from? It comes from an interpretation of the First Amendment which was then repeated again and again through the years until it became accepted as truth. Here’s what the First Amendment actually says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Not quite the same thing, is it? But while the guidelines in the First Amendment are very specific and finite in scope, the catch-all term “separation of church and state” can be applied on a much broader scale. And that can come in real handy for enterprising minds who might wish to apply it on a much broader scale.

When our minds are continually bombarded with something over and over, we eventually becomes desensitized to it. We stop questioning it. We accept it as fact; as “normal”.

And it makes no difference what it is that we are subjected to either. No matter how shocking, how vulgar, how blatantly false it may be to us initially; if we are hit with it again and again and again, it eventually – over time – becomes normal and inoffensive and true.

That my friends, is what you call brainwashing.

I read an interesting (and at this point, still shocking and vulgar) article this morning called: UMass faculty member argues for human cloning

You can read the whole thing if you like, but I would simply direct your attention to this one quote from the article:

Eddon acknowledged that the thought of human cloning is probably disturbing to most. But the “gut feeling” that cloning is immoral may be erased with exposure to it.

I agree with that statement. It might take awhile, but eventually, if we as a society continue to be subjected to the concept over and over again, it will take.

Ask yourself why you believe the things that you do. There’s lots to choose from: Evolution. Global warming. Terrorism. Food. Nutrition. Medicine. Insurance.

Regardless of what your views are on those topics – or any others – do you believe what you do about them because you gave them independent thought, study, and investigation yourself? Or do you believe what you do because it was told to you by someone else?

Over,
and over,
and over,
and over . . . .