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Thursday
Aug 19th

Some errors in Levy pandemic article

Just three blatant examples: Jeff Levy: "General fears surrounding the H1N1 virus drove governments to rush production and distribution of vaccines and antivirals that hadn't been properly tested for their efficacy or side effects. The Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency each questioned the effectiveness and benefits of the drugs Relenza and Tamiflu before they were approved for use." Many western governments, including U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia, had been stockpiling antivirals for years in advance of the H1N1 pandemic. Those governments had also ramped up vaccine-production capacity in advance, in anticipation of the "next pandemic," which they feared would be launched by the bird flu virus. All of those governments had experts advising WHO in advance of WHO's declaration of the pandemic one year ago, and all of those governments made their own very different decisions about how much vaccine to buy, and which priority groups should receive it. Jeff Levy: "The Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency each questioned the effectiveness and benefits of the drugs Relenza and Tamiflu before they were approved for use." That is their job. They do that with every new drug, and again after such drugs are on the market. Tamiflu and Relenza had been approved and sold in the U.S. and Europe for many years before the pandemic. Jeff Levy: "WHO purported the virus would afflict two billion people worldwide, nearly one third of the human population. The scientific evidence leading WHO to this conclusion remains a mystery to the public." WHO estimated that up to one third of the world's population might get swine flu because in previous pandemics, about a third of the population got infected, over the first year or two of the new virus' circulation. It isn't a mystery, and it wasn't a definite prediction -- it was a possibility based on past experience. I'm not going to go into the transparency issues, because I have many of the same complaints about WHO's transparency as you do. On the other hand, I am certain that WHO KNEW about all the conflicts of interest of their advisors, and worked hard to take those biases into account.
 

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