In early spring 2009, news reports from Veracruz, Mexico, reported an outbreak of a flu-like illness that affected children and young adults.
What has happened since has been called a “hoax” by some and a triumph of public health policies by a few. How can anyone complain about an event causing less harm than predicted?
The history of the situation raises some major issues involving incompetency, waste, conflicts of interest and greed.
We in the States have heard little about the controversies. In Europe, both the European Union and the Council of Europe have undertaken investigations. The head of the United Kingdom’s commission that establishes policies for vaccinations, Dame Deidre Hine (a physician), has admitted to very costly mistakes. The chief investigator for the Council of Europe, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, wrote a scathing report on how the World Health Organization and individual governments handled the pandemic. His exact quote is “the H1N1 pandemic.. is one of the greatest medical scandals of the century”.
Recommendations based on an earlier report (2004) elevated this flu to the highest level of danger — a level 6 pandemic.
This report was from the European Scientific Working Group on Immunizations. It changed criteria for declaring pandemics and strongly recommended stockpiling of vaccines and antivirals such as Tamiflu.
Due to this report, billions of dollars of antivirals were purchased between 2004 and 2010. The bird flu outbreak, that through the press appeared to be a large danger to the world resulted in widespread stockpiling, despite no human-to-human transmission occurring.
It has been only recently made public that the EWGI is funded entirely by manufacturers of antivirals (particularly Roche Pharmaceuticals) and vaccines, and several of those in the WHO decision process had received monies from these companies.
On April 27, 2009, Europe had its first H1N1 death in Spain of a returning vacationer from Mexico. Seventy-two hours later, Professor Neil Ferguson, a member of the World Health Organization task force on swine flu, warned that “40-50 percent of people in the UK could be infected within the next six months if the country was hit by a pandemic.”
In France, where an expert estimated 30,000 deaths in that country, only 312 occurred and most of the population had ignored fervent vaccination recommendations.
The problem was that observations “in the field” were clearly showing this to be a flu less harmful than the usual seasonal flu. For example, a study of health-care workers in pediatric clinics in Japan showed 30 percent had blood test evidence that they had been exposed to the new H1N1 strain. Yet , of this group, only one person reported any flu like symptoms. This was supported by more studies showing that while this flu is highly contagious, as are all influenzas, the effects are less than with other flu.
Unfortunately, people started visiting their doctor’s offices at a dramatically increased rate out of fear and were frequently given unnecessary antivirals. Very importantly, the antivirals have not been shown to decrease the rate of complications of flu, which are the cause of the mortality. They simply shorten the duration of the symptoms-by about half a day.
Consequences? In the UK, the government ordered enough vaccine to inoculate the entire country with two doses. When it became clear that the disease was not what they thought it was, they tried to cancel the unfilled orders. Glaxo, the major vaccine maker who had contracted to supply over $1 billion worth, refused to allow the cancellation.
What became more absurd was that the new H1N1 virus had displaced the older seasonal flu. Almost all flu cases in the 2009-10 season were H1N1. This was a fully predictable event based on past epidemics. Despite this, our CDC recommended that everyone get the old seasonal flu vaccine, regardless of risk status, in addition to the H1N1 vaccine, increasing the number of vaccinations to a level that the CDC determined it was a triumph of public health policy.
Recent reports indicate that 43 percent of government purchased vaccines will go unused.
The numbers for this pandemic in the U.S. show 276 deaths in children, double the usual number. There is no report showing how many of these children had the vaccine. The deaths occurred mostly in kids with neuromuscular disorders. There was little reason that straying from the initial recommendations that the vaccine should be reserved for high-risk people should have occurred.
But the overreaction caused unnecessary fears and untold expenses to our health-care system, with no demonstrable benefits. The adult population had numbers not worse than the usual flu season.