A LA RECHERCHE DU SWINE FLU

Marcel Proust, Author of "A La Recherche Du Swine Flu."

Swine flu. 2009. Pandemic. Remember?

Huge flop. Now there is concern that swine flu pandemania [a new word I just coined] was fanned by large pharmaceutical companies and their friends at the World Health Organization in order to sell vaccines. The swine flu was less dangerous than a typical seasonal flu. The vaccines did not work well, and sometimes not at all.  The pharma companies made billions.  Various investigations have ensued.

I recall being excoriated for being a pandemic skeptic. My remarks were, in fact, not skeptical enough.

Here is some further reading on the subject, if you care to check out how miserably this ended.

Read an article on the kerfuffle here.

Here's an article from The Atlantic about the bad science surrounding flu vaccines generally.

Here's an article about the conflicts of interest at WHO.

Experts are often wildly, disturbingly wrong.  I say wildly because remember, experts gave us leeching, bloodletting, eugenics and phrenology.  I say disturbingly because experts typically wrap themselves in a flowing mantle of holy science and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being a Holocaust Denier, or worse.  They try to stamp out legitimate debate by slandering and blackballing people who disagree with them.

In short, their expertise does not exempt them from human behavior, that is, from being wrong, sometimes stupidly so, and behaving badly about it.

Here are some examples of wildly wrong "expert" opinions.  

Ulcers - remember just a few decades ago, when there was scientific consensus that ulcers were stress induced?  Turns out it was a microbe.  Turns out you just take antibiotics and are cured.

Cigarettes - remember 70 years ago, when doctors prescribed them for stomach ailments and nerves?  Because they were experts?

Paul Ehrlich - "The Population Bomb."  We are all going to starve to death because we are having too many children.  Hasn't panned out.  Instead, we are facing economic catastrophe from depopulation if we don't start having more children.

Every other expert who has opined on the dangers of over-population since Thomas Malthus.

Global cooling.

Swine flu, 1976 edition.  The federal government is still paying damages for the injuries caused by the vaccine.

Ezra S. Vogel - "Japan as Number One."  Shortly after this book came out, Japan fell off a demographic cliff into a 20 year recession.

David Lereah - "Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust."  The book sold well until the real estate market busted.

M. King Hubbert - predicted oil production would peak in the 1970s ("Hubbert's Peak").  Someday, we will see Hubbert's Peak.  So far, no peak in sight.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."  Irving Fischer, Professor of Economics, Yale University (1929, shortly before Black Friday).  This one is a classic of the genre.

Oh me.