The 2009 Swine Flu Profiteers, featuring Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg

The 2009 Swine Flu Profiteers, featuring Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg (German with English subtitles)

In 2009, the world greatly feared a new virus showing up in Mexico. After a few months, it quickly turned out it was as good as harmless, with only a few hundred people confirmed dead from it, worldwide.(Later numbers in Wikipedia are significantly higher, but are still estimates)

Even so, the World Health Organization decided to declare a pandemic.The directions from the WHO are not binding for the states, but they create a strong political pressure.

WHO's decision to raise it from alert phase 4-5 to phase 6 was based on technical criteria that was decided in advance,based on geographic distribution. How many people actually die or get seriously ill in the world, is no longer a criterion for declaring a pandemic, geographic distribution is more important.

The raising to phase 6 meant billions of dollars in investments, in vaccines and medicines. The pharma industry and the WHO were in agreement. The worldwide flu danger makes use of medicines necessary. The measures that most states implemented after the declaration were based on WHO warnings. In France, five months after the outbreak of swine flu, the Health Minister still regards it as highly dangerous, even though that was already obviously not the case.

There are a number of people who have worked in the pharmaceutical industry and have carried that way of thinking over into the WHO, and in such a way that they make sure WHO's decisions are friendly to the pharma industry.

Also politicians and scientists have close economic and career ties to the pharma industry

At the beginning of the millennium, the pharma industry faced slim pickings. There were no new, innovative products, and one asked oneself how to keep up profits.So the specialists in the pharma industry pushed the development of the vaccine sector, where they invented epidemic warnings and pandemics, to boost the sale of vaccines.

The first thing that was attempted, was the much quoted bird flu. It is worth noticing that all the experts crying out against swine flu, were the same as the ones that cried out against bird flu. With the pandemic declaration, a principle of pharma marketing was adopted. The pharma industry can sell their products better when people are frightened, So one has to create a fear psychosis, so that people get weak and demand the vaccine and flu medicine like Tamiflu.

The pharmaceutical company Roche had made giant profits from Tamiflu once before. The bird flu gave the company record revenues, There were no evidence that this drug reduced the risk of severe complications or made hospital stays unnecessary, but governments bought the medicine for billions of dollars for the anticipated swine flu.