“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 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.
At the time Congressman Ron Paul was one of only two representatives to vote down the vaccination program. His comments were recorded in the book Swine Flu Expose, by Eleanora I. McBean, Ph.D., N.D.
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 here:
“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.