Isn’t it funny how the “Swine Flu” was all anyone talked about for a few days, and then it dropped from the headlines even though cases (and now deaths) continue to climb? I hate to propel conspiracy theories, and maybe I’ve seen too many episodes of 24, but the cynic in me can’t help but think that there are people in the government who want to H1N1 to get pretty bad. And if it does, how long will it take for Democrats or the President himself to blame the spread of the disease on lack of universal health care? How long will it take Arlen Specter to say that the people who died would still be alive had they been covered by socialized medicine?
There is no evidence of this, just conjecture. But they refused to close the borders, failed to close down schools in a timely fashion, wouldn’t encourage people not to fly (other than Joe Biden), and they continue to downplay the seriousness of the illness. Maybe nothing will come of it… but my better judgment says otherwise.
If you never let a serious crisis go to waste, surely someone is calculating how to use the Swine Flu to further their agenda.
I hope I’m wrong.
I know it’s kinda late to comment but I figured I would just throw my two cents in here..
If you really want to go out on the whole conspiracy theory thing, I would propose a hard look at the pork industry (rather than the government) allowing the H1N1 virus to get pretty bad in that they hope it will die down and -stop- getting so much attention. The swine flu has caused a lot of decreased sales for the pork industry, so much that they wanted the virus to be called its scientific name or hybrid flu. They don’t want a pandemic hype because the worse the press makes swine flu out to be – the worse off they are. I think that the swine flu has dropped out of the headlines because the pork industry probably lobbied or paid people off to cut it out because it’s bad for business.
But your suspicions of swine flu and other future pandemics is right on target. I mean, it’s called swine flu for a reason – it originally affected pigs! The virus crossed with avian and human flu and is now spreadable from person to person rather than animal to human. So, now we have a glimpse of a string of pandemics that we are just asking for with our current agribusiness industry.
The origins of swine flu:
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/key_facts.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j10SQpCO9Wc&feature=related
The origins of avian flu:
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/avianflu/
If the government did blame the pandemic on lack of health care, that would be ridiculous. It’s from factory farming and large type agricultural corporations. I don’t know much about health care or the pros/cons of it being universal, but we need to stop bsing ourselves and get to the root of the problem. The meat we eat does come from somewhere.. it predominately comes from sick animals that are given antibiotics in their feed and that live in such close quarters that it’s the perfect breeding ground for infectious diseases. 80% of the antibiotics produced in this country are for feeding factory farm animals.. that’s up from 55% in the 90s. Those antibiotics go straight through the animal and into the soil and is just asking to breed disease-resistant bacteria that will eventually find its way into our food or as a virus (like now) and affect us all. I really think that Pres. Obama should stop concentrating on health care and get to the source — that agribusiness is feeding us crap and making us all sick.. and we’re paying them to do it! But those corporations make so much money that they lobby the gov. to death and they can’t do anything about it.
So that’s my conspiracy theory.