Rotten Swines
Major pharmaceutical companies pressured the World Health Organisation (denied by the WHO) into lowering it's definition of a pandemic in the wake of last year's H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak, says today's papers.
In doing so, the profiteering buggers were thereby able to encourage mass hysteria it seems, with the primary aim of lining their own pockets. Shock, horror, surely not! Governments the world over were railroaded into buying lorry loads of vaccines they subsequently didn't need, to combat what turned out to be no more than a bit of a cold with ideas above it's station, they cry.
These are the same papers that were themselves responsible for whipping up the average gullible Joe on the street into a state of blind panic mind. And all that money that could have been put to better use, now lines the pockets of execs at major drugs companies around the world.
I wonder how many editors picked up a "brown envelope" for running such hype too?
PANIC!!!!!!! (Again)
Oh my Gawd!
One person in every 1.3 billion of the population of China has been confirmed to have the misnamed disease of swine flu. How significant is that. He's not dead yet, but he looks a bit "peaky". Consumption of pork will plummet overnight.
Sell, sell, sell.
Hang on a minute, melamine poisoning kills more people than that there in your average day.
Buy, buy, buy.
Swine Flu Less Dangerous Than Normal Influenza
The market finally seems to have woken up to the fact that the "world-wide pandemic" of swine flu is in reality far less dangerous than many in the media would have us believe.
In fact swine flu is responsible for far fewer deaths than normal influenza which kills 400,000 people globally every year, of which 36,000 are in the US.
More than 200,000 people are hospitalised by "normal" influenza every year, according to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It’s a situation where we should be cautious but not panicky," said Susan Rehm, medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
"From what we understand so far, the severity doesn’t seem to be much different than what it is in regular seasonal influenza," Rehm said.
Breaking News: US Record First Swine Flu Death
The US has become the first country to report a death from swine flu outside of Mexico.
A twenty-three month old infant has died from swine flu in Texas, according to breaking news reports.
A spokesman for the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the death to CNN but gave no further details.
There are currently 66 confirmed cases of the disease in America.
The CDCP says that about 36,000 people a year die of flu-related causes in the US.
Swine Flu My Arse
"Swine Flu Spreads to Hundreds in New York as Global Pandemic Threat Climbs," says the headline on Bloomberg this morning.
The article goes on to tell us that there are 45 cases in New York, mostly at the St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens where "82 students have called in sick."
The New Zealand "outbreak" was also amongst a group of students was it not?
Are we spotting a trend yet?
"I know I've just had a three week field trip to Mexico Mummy, but I've got a sore throat & a tickly cough. I think I may need a few weeks observation on the settee in front of Tricia and Jerry Springer before I go back to school. And besides all the teachers hate me, and the kids call me names."
"There there my pet lamb, lets get you down to hospital straight away, I'll buy you some Lucozade and some of those cough sweets you like on the way. But you'll have to go back eventually you know my precious one, you are the Geography teacher."
Workshy Students Drive Commodity Prices Lower, that would be a better headline.
Swine Flu: If My Auntie Had Balls She's Be My Uncle
Experts are unanimously agreed that gold bars can't catch swine flu. Gold therefore is just about the only commodity that is up this morning.
Just about everything else can catch it, or be affected by it, it would seem. Grains are down because pigs eat them. Crude is down because flights to Mexico are getting cancelled. Frozen concentrated orange juice is down because if we don't go on holiday then we won't drink any, apparently.
I feel sorry for the manufacturers of those little tins of boiled sweets covered in icing sugar, nobody buys those unless they are going on holiday do they?
Presumably the reason that GlaxoSmithKline shares are up this morning is in case they manage to cash in by inventing a cure for it whilst it's still hot news?
If everyone in China stops eating pork where will we be then, eh? Just imagine that, that's what 1.3 billion people, lets say they eat half a pig per year, we don't really know, we don't really care. That's 650 million pigs, how much do they eat? Loads according to www.chinesepigseatloads.com. Suppose that we have to kill every single pig in the entire world because 103 Mexicans have died, and a few students have a bit of an upset tummy?
Sell soybeans, crude oil, Suduko magazines, Ray Bans, Piz Buin, fake Rolexes and Fat Face flip flops. Buy gold and Linda McCartney vegetarian nut cutlets.
And if my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle.
PANIC!!!!!
A terrible disease is RAMPAGING across Mexico, sending SHOCK-WAVES around the globe. Commodity markets are PLUNGING on the news of the DEVASTATING effects of swine-flu is as the international PANDEMIC sweeps the ENTIRE WORLD in the grip of a CRISIS so ENORMOUS it has caused widespread PANIC on the streets.
HOSPITALS are on stand-y for a TIDAL WAVE of new patients DESPERATE for a dose of the TAMIFLU ANTIVIRUS, their last hope of SALVATION.
DON'T LEAVE THE HOUSE Mexico City residents are being warned and WEAR FACE MASKS AT ALL TIMES or face the highly likely possibility of a TORTUROUS DEATH before ye shall burn for all eternity in the fires of HELL.
Commodity markets went into FREEFALL on the news, with soybeans CRASHING their daily LIMIT DOWN in China Monday morning.
Oh yes. We've not had a good panic now for ages have we? Let's get some newspapers sold. Bird flu, pah. Salmonella in eggs, my arse. CJD and BSE are so yesterday darling. Blue ear, blue tongue, blue bollox.
Already a GIGANTIC 0.000015% of the population at the outbreak's EPICENTRE in Mexico have been affected (yes I have done the calculation). That's affected, not died. If you want the DEAD figure you need to add another zero and to lop the five of the end.
Nobody has actually died in America yet (or anywhere else outside Mexico for that matter), but a whopping 0.00000006% have already been affected, that's 20 people to you & me.
And don't forget the Scottish couple in Lanarkshire, yes the DEADLY DISEASE is amongst us here too, with 0.00000003% of the population affected - although their flu-like symptoms are disappointingly mild and the couple's condition was causing little CONCERN. Bugger, I bet they're ginger as well.
Four suspected cases have also been found in France. Let's keep our fingers crossed for them eh? It's only a matter of hours before the French ban Ben & Jerry's ice cream on the back of it, surely.
Of course it doesn't really matter what I think, or even if I'm right, it's down the what the market perceives the threat to be. Currently, it seems, that the market thinks that this could have a serious affect on demand for corn & soymeal in the US. Indeed as with BSE and the Edwina-inspired salmonella in eggs scare in this country, although the reality of the threat to humans was tiny, scaremongering in the media was sufficient to sway public demand.
We'll have to wait a few days to see how this one pans out.
