"Step
back and think for a minute before rushing and panicking"
is the message coming from Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has
warned that the swine flu scare will once again be used as a
precedent for big government intrusion.
"It makes me think back to 1976, the first
year I served in the Congress," Paul has said in a video
update. "We had a vote on the swine flu. Back
then there was panic, they said it was going to sweep the nation
and they rapidly came up with some flu shots and the government
was going to inoculate everybody and save the world from this
disaster."
"It turned out that our instincts were correct."
the Congressman, also a medical physician, commented. "Not
only did we think that the government should be involved in
making medical decisions... but the flu came, the flu went and
one person died, except for those individuals that died from
getting the flu vaccine."
Earlier this week we reported on the events of
1976, highlighting the fact that this last significant outbreak
of swine flu in the U.S. originated at
the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
President Gerald Ford and then Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld (a man who has long standing intimate ties with
the big pharma companies that have and will reap millions in
profits from these scares) instituted a mass nationwide vaccination
program. More than 40 million people were vaccinated. However,
the program was stopped short after over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre
syndrome, a severe paralyzing nerve disease, were reported.
Officially 30 people died as a direct result of the vaccinations,
though the real figure is generally thought to have been much
higher.
Paul described the move as “a shocking misuse
of funds …and an evil political maneuver”, “blatant
advertising efforts to panic the people into taking Swine Flu
shots will fail.” Paul said.
Some of the fearmongering advertisement campaigns
from 1976 are featured in the following video:
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"Here we are once again, swine flu coming
up and everybody is panicking." Ron Paul says in his latest
update.
"This is not to downplay the seriousness
of it. Some people have died, some people might die, yet we've
had no deaths in this country, there's seven or eight cases
up in New York, but none have even been hospitalised and yet
it's practically like we've been attacked by nuclear weapons."
The Congressman put the current panic in perspective
by pointing out that last year alone there were 13,000 cases
of tuberculosis with the number of annual deaths last recorded
in the hundreds.
Paul then opined on how the scare will once again
be pounced upon to bolster and further empower big government.
He referred to Janet Napolitano's announcement Sunday that the
Department of Homeland Security had started "passive surveillance
protocols to screen people coming into the country."
"How did the Department of Homeland Security
get into the medical business? It's just totally out of control,"
Paul said, describing the situation as an open door invitation
to allow the federal government to deal with medical problems.
The big question is 'Does a bigger government
always solve these problems?' No, they usually make things much
worse.
"Step
back and think for a minute before rushing and panicking"
is the message coming from Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has
warned that the swine flu scare will once again be used as a
precedent for big government intrusion.
