I am aware that I'm bring up an 'old' thread. But I feel I should comment. I should also state that I do work for the federal government in a healthcare capacity. I do not work for the FDA, but we do work closely with the CDC. This has not however changed my view on flu vaccinations. My 'arm' of that I work for is responsible for the horrible outcome of the 1918-1919/20 influenza. Primarily lack of reporting. The first known case of what is popularly known as the Spanish flu began in Kansas, USA. The zero town that was affected had a death rate of 70% in 6 days. We were as an agency were notified. And did nothing. A lot of reasons why-incompetency, politics and disbelief. History will also tell you that Woodrow Wilson is a disgraceful individual who purposely tied the hand of healthcare workers and mandated that WWI soldiers leave the U.S. sick with this flu. Thus spreading it throughout the world. Much of the mortality rate from WWI is from the flu. It is recorded that at least 3 battles in WWI were stopped literally because the U.S./French side and the German side were too sick with it to fight. The world knows on of these battles because it from the media propaganda named it the "Christmas Truce".

Part of my job in early 2009 was completely pulled from me and I was placed on the H1N1 workgroup. I can tell you that there was true panic in the conference rooms. People yelling at each other, talking over one another, papers being thrown out of frustration. One of the emerging patterns that I noticed and they ran with was the migration farmers pattern. Watching the migrating farmers as they go state to state pulling lettuce, cotton, tomatoes, from the south all the way to the north. It was very  real movement within that body that showed H1N1 so  we sent out without any scientific cause other than this pattern epidemiologists at each migrant camp in the south and midwest. The H1N1 was there is a very high amount. These people are legal citizens (many are not but we ignored that) that if you followed them back to their genesis point that was in Central Mexico where they have family and homes. Backtracked to a farm owned by Smithfield's. That's when it was truly understood that this was from a species jump. More panic ensued. In biology and science it is one of the scariest of species transfers: porcine to human.

When we see a jump of species: bovine, porcine, avian to human it is almost always due to close quarters living. Usually the jump happens with only one affected human. It takes a lot of work to get the virus to jump porcine, human and then human, human again. All viruses are self limiting. But they don't 'want' to be. They need to survive to propagate themselves. So generally you'll see a person sick with some unknown virus and they get well and that's it. But--that person goes BACK to the close quarters of their livestock. Many viruses can live for many hours on the skin, shedding.  This person feels fine, but they're still shedding the virus to back to their livestock.

I must digress to explain something important. What happens now is the virus begins to 'change it's coat' my favorite analogy is it's football uniform. Now it has the game plan from the failed attempt of virus #1 affecting human. They switch uniform colors. Reinfect the person or others, and it 'takes'. The issue as to why ALL viruses are difficult to treat is because they keep changing their football uniform in the middle of the game. And the defenders (your body's immune system) only has one playbook with 1 football uniform. When the virus changes mid stream the immune system goes into overdrive to counter the change. It takes up to 8 hours to change the immunity response to fight the new football uniform and then *presto!* virus changes AGAIN to a completely different uniform. All the while the defenders (immune system) is flooding the body with its 'soldiers' which is the white blood cells. To assure a quick delivery of the soldiers to the affected area capillaries open wide creating redness in the infected area, fever in the body. Most people who died in the Spanish flu were strong, young men. The stronger the body's immune system is, the stronger it fights. But it does not have a 'shut off valve' when its a new invader/football team. It keeps fighting and fighting until the immune system simply kills the host (person). Of course a virus does not want to kill its host, it needs its host to live to continue to spread the virus. But even in death viruses have a special way of continuing to transfer the virus. Somehow the virus 'knows' of cultural dictates. One being washing of the dead body, wrapping the body in care and dignity. A person does expel bodily fluids upon death; urine and feces. However, in the Spanish flu it managed to create even in death an appearance of the body struggling to breathe. It was very distressing to many physicians and other caretakers. This last LAST gasp was the viruses way of transferring itself to continue its life cycle.

After a while in working with viruses, parasites I do actually think they 'think'. If you understood what I see you'd understand...

Back to 2009 and livestock. The transfer back of the virus from its human host to it's original, intended host the pig particularly in the case was the key. The virus reinvented itself and reintroduced itself to be more virulent strain than previous affected the human. Some humans are asymptomatic, show no ill affects of having been infected with the virus. But they still shed the virus. The biggest way is through respiratory and skin transfer. From the lungs and from touching things: doorknobs, your mouth, nose, eyes. And it manages to live for DAYS. Not hours like a 'normal' virus.

If I haven't mentioned the panic we felt when we found out the source I'll tell you now. We thought for certain that we had on our hands another repeat of the 1918 flu. The mindset was "Let's throw everything at it and hope something sticks'. When you're in crisis mode that is what you do. There is stockpile of vaccines for this purpose but the 1918 flu requires biolevel 4 for goodness sakes! Right up there with Ebola! And it's supposedly (a lie) been completely eliminated as a tool for research. It is one of the scariest viruses we know to man and here we thought we see a repeat.

What we knew from that stage was this virus was killing babies in utero up to time of birth. What happens is the new football team (virus) passes the barrier to the baby and wrecks absolute havoc on the babies immune system completely frying their brains. And sadly, I mean that literally. The most affected were pregnant women of all the population demographics. The mortality rate for the child in utero is 100%. The vaccine is maybe 11%. What do we do? Allow all 100% probability of death or get 89% survival? Children from age 2 we could get no better than that. Their death rates based on what we saw was 75%. With vaccination hopefully 90%--which we never saw any success out of utero that was statistically viable.

I was not part of that final decision. But it is obvious that it was chosen to give a faulty vaccination FOR the lives of 89% survival. Is it bad science? In retrospect perhaps. But do notice that we were in sheer panic. We saw the end of the world. From my perspective--I saw this as part of the beginning of the end where parents would gnash their teeth, lamenting and blaspheming God for the deaths of innumerable children. Where I got that in my head, I have no idea. I remember coming back to my hotel room, throwing off my clothes and collapsing to my knees and begging God to do something with this virus.

He did. It became inexplicably and suddenly very short in its self limitation. It disappeared. For now.

This virus has many similarities as the 1918 virus. One of them was it went suddenly dormant and 'disappeared' for 10 months. Just gone. Nothing. Then it reared its ugly head and was more deadly the second time around. The 1918 virus had people literally dying within hours after contracting the virus. The virus now did not have to worry about transfer and its lifecycle--it had plenty of hosts (people) to continue. It went on a rampage. Kiling literally 10's of millions of people in less than 18 months. And, it the viruses greed killed it off creating its self limitation by killing all of its hosts and could no longer transmit itself.

All flu viruses known to man in today's modern age are direct descendents of the "Spanish" flu. The next 'big' thing is avian flu. Which we've seen sporadic activity always in Hong Kong or China due to the way they have their ducks in close proximity--in outdoor stores and particularly in China they simply place the crates of ducks in their homes and then live with them... Frustrating, no?

That's a side of the story that is not told often. I do agree that the flu vaccinations are questionable. But in the face of certain death--what would you have done in my shoes? Save SOME children or allow all to die?