Susan Sutti – CNN Sept 27, 2018
An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This means it was the deadliest season in more than four decades — since 1976, the date of the first published paper reporting total seasonal flu deaths, said CDC Spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund.
In previous seasons, flu-related deaths have ranged from a low of about 12,000 during the 2011-2012 season to a high of about 56,000 during the 2012-2013.
Total flu fatalities during the most recent season included the deaths of 180 children, which exceeds the previous record high of 171 during a non-pandemic flu season, according to the CDC.
“One hundred and eighty kids — this really hit me hard as the father of three kids — died last year from the flu. And the majority of them were unvaccinated,” said US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams. speaking at a news conference hosted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases on Thursday. “Flu vaccinations save lives.”
Additionally, the nation experienced a record-breaking estimated 900,000 hospitalizations last flu season.
‘Definitely bad’
Overall, the United States experienced one of the most severe flu seasons in recent decades. Severity is based on flu activity, hospitalizations, and deaths from pneumonia or influenza, explained Nordlund. She added, “across the board, last year was definitely bad.”
The season began with an increase of illness in November; high activity occurred during January and February, and then illness continued through the end of March.
“The thing that was most notable about last year was how high in terms of activity things were,” said Nordlund. She explained that last season, unlike previous seasons, flu did not strike one region of the country and then move across the land. “There were three consecutive weeks when the entire continental US was affected by flu at a very high level,” she said.
The 2017-2018 season was also marked by high severity across all age groups — the first season where the CDC found that to be the case.
Adams said that getting the flu shot by the end of October is not just about keeping yourself safe and healthy, it’s also about community. It’s your “social responsibility to get vaccinated,” he said, since it protects others around you, including family, friends, co-workers and neighbors.
We now have virologists, the media, and the politicians shutting down the entire economy looking for the most reliable denominator to determine the disease-specific mortality rate which simply is the % of dead among all those infected with the disease. We now know that there are a number of problems with the reliability of the numerator where you have so much inflation based on the scouring by health officials for the mere presence of COVID 19 with the bodies and records of the deceased, and especially with cases where the COVID 19 is only a minor contributing factor to death.
There now appears to be a strong interest to get the mortality rate as high as possible. With most of the attention now being focused on getting a reliable denominator by “testing”, as many people as possible to see if they are infected or had been infected, the political decision makers are eagerly awaiting that magic number to determine if they are going to keep everything shut down beyond April. However, when they come to assess the risk they will have to compare the percentage number they find this year to former years of “influenza-related” deaths, in an effort to exhibit the severity of the present risk, but because of differences in methodology presently being applied in determining both the numerator and the denominator, our decision makers will no doubt end up only comparing apples to oranges.
The fact is that once you have clearly identified that sector of the population which has a significant risk of dying from the virus you neither need a denominator with wide-spread testing to protect you know who are at risk of dying, nor do you need to enforce any special measures to protect that other highly identified portion of the population which is not at any significant risk.
Many governments in other nations with far less resources seem to get it. They have removed the restrictions from their general populations, and have instead focused on protecting that small sector of the population with pre-existing serious co-morbidity conditions, who are mostly over 75, and which have a significant mortality risk from catching the virus. For example, if you have a population with 2% of the people at risk of dying from a virus and they all have red hair, you do not have to quarantine the entire population to protect those with red hair.
Is there an other agenda with the governments of our so-highly advanced nations in maintaining the national shutdowns? With all of the resources and expertise at their disposal, how could they be so blind to common sense in the circumstances not to have another agenda or purpose? The US CDC and other such equivalent agencies in other nations must remain suspect. If they can jigger the data to make things fit for their present agenda they must have done so in the past.
The influenza-related deaths for the 2017-2018 flu season according to US CDC stats show 61,000 influenza-related deaths, which is an amazing number when considering that from 2010 to 2019 the average death rate from the flu was approximately 33,700. That season gave a huge boost to the cause of the flu vaccine. High flu-related mortality data no doubt is crucial for the growth and importance of the US CDC as it is for big pharma supplying the vaccinations. The US government is constantly “lobbied” by big pharma and we all know that the flu vaccine is a really big money maker for big pharma. The more the COVID 19 virus can be made to seem a threat to everyone, then the more justification for a universal flu vaccination program being imposed on everyone by our governments. That is only one possible ulterior motive to the extremes, but no doubt a highly desired motive for those presently influencing and lobbying the decision makers.