Touching Up the X-Rays

The World Health Organization (WHO), in an attempt to appease world leaders and protect global trade, has once again stepped into something messy. They are now saying that they’ve strongly suspected Human to Human (H2H) transmission of the H5N1 virus in the past, but couldn’t `prove it’, and therefore what is happening in Indonesia is not all that alarming.

While most flunatics, and many independent scientists, have suspected this for a year or longer, up until the last couple of days, the mantra from the WHO has been that infected chickens were the only serious threat to human health. They have downplayed any talk of H2H transmission on nearly a daily basis, and in doing so, have convinced many people that the threat of H5N1 is less than it really is.

They have told the world that a H2H transmission was nearly impossible, and that H2H2H2H transmission would be needed before any serious alarm bells would need to be sounded.

Well, suddenly, they are faced with a multiple chain of human infections (the dreaded H2H2H2H) and now they are looking for some way to quell the growing panic. The simple solution they have devised is to rewrite history, say that this is common, and tell the people to go back to sleep.

Having long suspected that limited human transmission has occurred, I can take some comfort in their analysis, but not much. What we are seeing in Indonesia probably has occurred in the past, and to date, no pandemic has occurred. Each time it happens, however, we are increasing the odds of a pandemic outbreak, and that is of deep concern.

Now the WHO is trying desperately to find an infected chicken somewhere in the village where this cluster began to blame, and so far has found no infected birds. Despite this failing, they have concluded that the first patient to die, who was buried without tests, `probably was in contact with infected birds or infected bird feces’, even though there is absolutely no evidence that this is true.

Simply put, instead of trying to prove H2H transmission, they are trying to disprove it. And they will apparently go to whatever lengths necessary to achieve that result.

This is the kind of mentality that will prove the world’s undoing in the end. The WHO is more concerned with containing information than the virus.

There is an old joke about a bad doctor who, while he couldn’t cure you, would touch up your X-rays for a small fee.

Apparently, he now works for the WHO.