Rush Limbaugh Vs H1N1

Michael White

Via Chris Mooney, I learn that Rush Limbaugh, whose ability to smell out a conspiracy is on par with the ability of the male silk moth to sniff out the presence of a female from miles away, has called the whole H1N1 thing a hoax:

A bogus pandemic! You combine this with the UK story and we can see what's happened here, a manufactured, phony crisis. Hoax and change. The media loved this BS story, but you were a problem. I was a problem, actually. I wasn't going to get a vaccine for a phony emergency, and I told Kathleen Sebelius to stuff it publicly on this program. Kathleen Sebelius showing us how to sneeze on our arms so that we wouldn't destroy all of human life before global warming got us. We are the targets of lies, damn lies and science and scientists are rapidly becoming as trustworthy as politicians.

While I know that scientists have an amazing capacity for organizing evil conspiracies (with evolution global warming among the more notable successes), I'm skeptical on this one, Rush.

Let's look at the numbers. If you head over to the CDC's weekly flu survey site, you can get the most current reporting.

Here's is a breakdown of lab-confirmed flu hospitalizations by age group, through the end of November - compare the solid red line line (cumulative hospitalization rate for 2009-2010) to the three traces for 06-07, 07-08, and 08-09 (EIP means cases counted in the Emerging Infections Program surveillance sites):

This year looks bad, but there is good news - influenza hospitalizations and deaths were down at the end of November:

So did we overreact? Uh, no - look at the Pneumonia and Influenza (often tightly associated) death rates in 2008, and again in 2009 - we are still technically above the epidemic threshold (red trace above the top black trace):

And, just to scare you some more, let's take a look at influenza-associated pediatric mortality. Basically, the 2009-2010 flu season really sucks compared to the last few flu seasons:

Of course, if the CDC is in on the conspiracy, this is exactly what they would say...

Just for kicks, here's the CDC update on Flu Vaccine Safety:

Seasonal influenza vaccines consistently have had excellent safety profiles, as documented in recent multiyear studies (5). However, in 1976, a vaccine against a swine-origin influenza virus was associated with a small, but statistically significant, increased risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome among adult vaccinees in the 8 weeks after vaccination (attributable risk: 1 per 100,000 vaccinees). The reasons for this association remain unknown. Vaccine production has changed since 1976, with increased use of vaccines which are treated with solvents to produce split-virus vaccines, or with detergents to produce subunit vaccines, resulting in fewer adverse reactions. However, the historical association with the swine-origin influenza virus of 1976, high public expectations for the H1N1 vaccine program, and the federal commitment to ensure vaccine safety all have contributed to efforts to enhance vaccine safety monitoring systems for H1N1 vaccines...

Data from VAERS [Vaccine Event Reporting System) indicated that the overall reporting rate after H1N1 vaccination was higher than the rate after seasonal influenza vaccination. Although these data might represent an actual difference in the safety of the vaccines, the difference might have resulted from efforts to enhance reporting to VAERS and heightened public awareness of the H1N1 vaccines. VSD has the capability to test and strengthen hypotheses generated by VAERS reports. To date, preliminary VSD data indicate no increase above background rates for monitored health events among recipients of H1N1 vaccines. VSD, because of its ability to follow populations of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons over time, can detect associations between health events and vaccination. This and other systems will continue to monitor adverse events after H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccination and can help determine whether adverse events after vaccination are causally related to the vaccines (Table 3).

The report states that for H1N1 vaccine there have been 82 adverse event reports per 1 million vaccine doses, compare with 47 reports per million for seasonal flu. Don't get excited here - that difference is indistinguishable from background fluctuations, and, moreover, may be due to, according to the report authors, increased vigilance in reporting of events by clinicians in this atmosphere of heightened flu vaccine anxiety.

Get yourself vaccinated.

Read the feed:

Comments

You picked a nice picture of Rush - a lot better treatment than the partisan political sites do for him. But that is all the fair and balanced he gets on this topic. When you're wrong, you get to be told - it's the beauty of not having the pretense of being journalists here.

Hank Campbell | 12/10/09 | 19:45 PM

Damn, I sent the wrong impression - I thought the picture made him look like a pompous jackass.

His over the top comments made such an easy target.

—

Mike

Michael White | 12/10/09 | 20:03 PM

I like cigars, though I agree many of my cigar-smoking brethren can look like pompous jackasses. And he is 80 lbs. lighter in your pic than political enemies show him as.

He's no Jenny McCarthy, that's for sure. I believe anything she says.

Hank Campbell | 12/10/09 | 20:09 PM

It's not the cigar itself - it's the entire effect, combined with my impression of how he operates that made it look pompous to me.

He has lost weight - I don't know if this is a new picture, but he has looked thinner recently.

—

Mike

Michael White | 12/11/09 | 09:27 AM

Bear in mind that a sore arm counts as an adverse event.

Josh Witten | 12/10/09 | 21:25 PM

Your criticism of Rush's words could be taken more seriously if you showed more willingness (and ability) to interpret those words correctly. There is, for instance, a large difference between a pandemic and an epidemic. There is also a difference in the impression that charts give about data, depending on how they portray that data. Each of your charts violates the ethics of data representation by using a misleading size ratio to imply a larger effect than is actually true.

Then, according to the actual data in your charts, pediatric deaths are up about 50% from last year, but what about H1N1 deaths for healthy adults? You have numbers, but no comparative data for previous years. Why not? Surely that information is available. And why give us the unseparated P/I information, where is the difference between the seasonal baseline and the epidemic threshold is a fraction of a percentage point? Surely there must be better determiners than this for judging the difference between whether this year is a true pandemic/epidemic or not.

The fact is, Rush is criticizing the government's claim that H1N1 constitutes an absolute, certifiable, across-the-board crisis--a true, around-the-world pandemic, similar to the 1918-1920 Spanish flu (H1N1) epidemic that killed 50-100 million people worldwide. Are you willing to argue that we have such an epidemic on our hands today?

ulyssesmsu (not verified) | 12/10/09 | 22:43 PM

There were warnings that this virus could develop into something as nasty as the Spansih flu. It should be obvious, but it's worth saying: we've done a lot now to avert such a catastrophe that people weren't able to do in 1918. The fact that 20 million people have not died is not evidence that this was trumped up crisis.

And we're not out of the woods - there is still potential for highly transmissible swine flu to pick up genetic material from highly lethal bird flu and make something nastier.
And, by the way, there are charts in my post that have data for adults and comparisons with previous years. If you missed them, go back and take a more careful look.

—

Mike

Michael White | 12/11/09 | 09:21 AM

The fact is, Rush is...

Wow. Not used to seeing the word "fact" in the same sentence with Rush. Isn't this one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Gerhard Adam | 12/10/09 | 23:28 PM

Limbaughs comments are those of an ignorant infamatory pundit with opinons and no actual knowledge of what he speaks about.
The giveaway is always the same: as in this example he provides NO actual numbers, statistics, date ranges, sources, etc. Just his stupid-based opinion. The fact that so many Americans actually view this radio-clown as a source of insight is what gives me the chills.

Anonymous (not verified) | 12/11/09 | 10:44 AM

I think of Rush as a stopped clock, right twice a day. I also think of him as a pompous twat (rhymes w/ 'cat'). Then I don't think about him at all.

Tom Jones (not verified) | 12/11/09 | 11:25 AM

I think of Rush as a stopped clock, right twice a day.

One doesn't have to be wrong all of the time to be a perfect example of a demagogue.

—

Mike

Michael White | 12/11/09 | 11:45 AM

Yeah get vaccinated, or at least send your $40 to Novartis or GSK or Baxter. Then drink the mercury from a $2 thermometer since it's the same thing. Morons.

There is NO chance of a 1918 satyle pandemic. That was caused by half a decade of malnutrition, stress, and misallocation of resources from a little thing called The Great War.

Speaking of misallocating resources (as that nonsensical Freeman Dyson points out), we know that global warming was a hoax made up by scientists who were stupid enough to send emails to each other about how to "hide the decline" in temperature.

Getting schooled must gall you all who have paid so much in student loans already and think yourselves not only correct, but free to lie and hoodwink for the "greater good". You disgust me.

Daniel Miller (not verified) | 12/11/09 | 11:48 AM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/6211768/Patients-suffer-comp...
http://detnews.com/article/20091211/NATION/912110370/Nation-/-World-briefs

50 million Americans had swine flu? I'm calling BS. It's the medical equivalent of the Gulf of Tonkin or Iraq's WMD.

Chris Johnson (not verified) | 12/11/09 | 11:53 AM

Look at it this way. He and his "followers" won't get vaccinated.

Anonymous (not verified) | 12/11/09 | 12:20 PM

Michael,
I pity you. My commenters are way more educated than yours :D :D :D
But probably you make a lot more hits than me with these posts :(
Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 12/11/09 | 12:35 PM

Sometimes it's a trade-off we have to make!
But I have to say - you occasionally get wild comments on yours - the LHC and the sex scandals of Italian politicians generate some interesting discussion.

—

Mike

Michael White | 12/11/09 | 12:37 PM

... Oh, and - in any case, great post!
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 12/11/09 | 12:36 PM

"There is, for instance, a large difference between a pandemic and an epidemic."

Actually not, a pandemic is simply a geographically widespread epidemic. Both are technical terms used by medical science to describe the EXTENT (not the virluence) of an infectionous agent spreadng through populations. H1N1 is highly infectous (spreads and infects large numbers of individuals) and pandemic (now global) as predicted last year by the CDC. It is also quite dangerous to some subsegments of the population.

Rush is NOTin priority group for the H1N1 vaccine - check your facts.
Rush is a top notch radio entertainer - don't take medical advice or public heath gudence from a guy who downed 30,000 Oxycotin and Vocodins (yes he doctor shopped here in PB County and bought something like 30,000+ pills (FACT he was charged in Florida got off with a good lawyer and help from the ACLU!) - which he appears to have injested over a few years ) - that is how he lost his hearing. There is some science he liked I guess.

Anonymous (not verified) | 12/11/09 | 16:39 PM

After reading the dreck from Daniel Miller and ulyssesmsu, I hope some bright young biochemist is blending 2009/H1N1 with an exceptionally virulent avian flu that targets the stupidity gene.
I thought I read a snide remark about journalists on this post, and I'd track it down if I were not on deadline, writing a story about the CDC's latest flu update and the availability of 2009/H1N1 to school-age and college kids.
Oh, Daniel? Just in case I wasn't clear: You're an idiot.

Rod Rose | 12/11/09 | 22:46 PM

I'm sorry but I think you missed the point of Rush's comments. This flu was refered to at the beinging of all of this as the "Pandemic Flu" by some public health officials and media outlets. It was made to sound like the end of the world. Like 1/3 people who got it would die, and 1/1 who got it would be so ill they would need to be hospitalized for a month. I had the flu, the details of the symptoms match H1N1 best. The truth is H1N1 is just another flu.
Rush is a political commentator. He was merely commenting on the fear mongering of the press, and how certain politicians were blowing this WAY out of proportion for the sake of a partisan political agenda... namely nationalized/socialized medicine. (By showing government as the savior) It's only too bad that the govn't ran flu vaccine program showcased long lines and elements of rationing.

I fully acknowledge that you are technically right.... but Rush was not using technical jargon with precise definitions of a scientist.

—

Dont tase me bro

Hontas Farmer | 12/12/09 | 00:18 AM

And to add to your point, it certainly doesn't help when scientists stretch words like "epidemic" to refer to non-infectious diseases, behaviors, and the sort.

Regardless of these words' technical definitions, they are being used - even by experts - to strike fear into the hearts of the public. Now, maybe this fear is justified, even if H1N1 doesn't prove to be a threat (which is likely the case given that cases seem pretty mild). Should H1N1 not prove to be a huge threat, however, the concern is that organizations like the CDC&WHO will be seen as crying wolf. The better route is to play to people's rational sides even in times of potential danger, although this might not win you much funding.

The theme so far has been 'better safe than sorry', but when you're playing off of public fear, they can be quick to turn their back on you. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a big conspiracy so much as a lack of foresight combined with a dense bureaucratic system that generously rewards you if you can predict a future crisis.

kerr jac | 12/12/09 | 13:38 PM

I think there are really two problems at work here. In the first place, the general mood of our society has been to treat virtually everything the government does with a skeptical eye. It seems that there is little faith that anything said is ever truthful and consequently if something doesn't happen EXACTLY as someone says, there are enough people ready to call it a lie.

In the second place, it is difficult to claim credit for preventing something from happening. We heard that enough from the Bush administration where they used the lack of events as proof that they were protecting the country from terrorists. The point is that even if everything said about H1N1 was completely true, a successful prevention program will make you look like you overplayed the crisis.

It's a lose-lose proposition. Unfortunately people like Rush have helped create this environment. They taken a healthy skepticism and turned it into cynicism and outright hatred. At this juncture there is nothing that anyone in government can ever do that won't be viewed as a lie or pushing an alternative agenda.

I used to think that I was fairly radical in my anti-government sentiment, but in today's environment I am concerned that today's anti-government crowd are rabidly uninformed and simply following the propaganda stream. They don't even realize how society is being undermined by people whose true interest is simply to garner more ratings.

Gerhard Adam | 12/12/09 | 13:50 PM

Good points all around. It's hard to imagine the checked and balanced government that was set out by the framers being able to respond to something like this.

At the same time, however, you're setting yourself up for failure when you hit the panic button in the face of something that may not be a panic.

More importantly, there are also ways to measure the efficacy of a prevention and to build in appropriate flexibility into one's plan of action. For instance, one might look at the interruption of terrorist plots in the US, or in the case of the flu, at the evolving severity of the danger: Yes, it is 'pandemic', but no it doesn't look dangerous. Or even from a more nuanced perspective, as older people are getting it much less than would be expected, younger or middle-aged people (who are more likely to spread it) should be priority for vaccination. A lack of flexibility / accounting is what marred the 70's effort to vaccinate everyone against swine flu - by the time the vaccine came out, no knew cases had been reported for almost 6 months.

There are always ways to build in accountability, and - if well planed - to pass on such findings to the public. This a quesiton not only of policy but of science, where a lack of findings cannot be soundly interpreted as supporting your hypothesis. In such instances, if a scientist threw up his and hands and said his hypothesis is true even though he can't support it, he'd be booted off the stage. The policy analogue of this - at the extreme - would be proposing a drastic response to a catastrophic future event - say, the revitalization of the dinosaurs who proceed to take over mankind - which is highly unlikely but has huge downside potential should it occur.

The correct plan of action - in both scientific&policy realms - is either to change your goals or to find indirect ways to support your hypotheses/actions.

kerr jac | 12/12/09 | 14:33 PM

Actually I think we're long past fixing any of this. In most social groups (animals and tribal), when a group becomes too large or there is dissent, the group splits to form alternatives. In fact, one could argue that that is precisely the basis of natural selection (at least in a social situation). Using that example, then the "best" ideas would be the ones that would flourish while others would die out (or at least evolve along a different path).

This is the stage I believe we are at, where each side is convinced that the other side is not only wrong but actively working to destroy them. Under such circumstances it's hard to imagine that there is any opportunity for reconciliation.

At this point it almost feels like society is being pulled in two opposite directions like an object in a gravitational field is subjected to tidal forces. Such an exertion in different directions often causes the object to simply break-up. If we take the labels of "liberal" and "conservative" as an example, it's as if society is oscillating between being a liberal country and then a conservative country. Each cycle generating stronger counter forces that become ever more divisive.

I realize that there are ample historical examples of similar concerns being expressed in various societies, but then again there are ample historical examples of societies collapsed under such forces. I can certainly offer no prediction, but I suspect that recapturing social unity is not something that is on the horizon.

Gerhard Adam | 12/12/09 | 14:47 PM

Anonymous wrote: "Limbaughs comments are those of an ignorant infamatory pundit with opinons and no actual knowledge of what he speaks about. The giveaway is always the same: as in this example he provides NO actual numbers, statistics, date ranges, sources, etc. Just his stupid-based opinion. The fact that so many Americans actually view this radio-clown as a source of insight is what gives me the chills"

Speaking of "stupid-based opinions"!!

Horace Hogsnort (not verified) | 12/12/09 | 16:39 PM

We from the planet Tralfamadore are extremely excited about taking as many vaccines as possible as we cannot digest regular food from your planet. While radiator fluid is poisonois to humans and dogs we must have is as a part of our daily balanced nutrition. We thank the US Govt and CDC everyday. Also for the mercury and adjuvants. And as for giving children mercury, it's very important to keep the masses dumbed down as much as possible as we are planning a takover of your planet within 10 years. We have been working with Mr. Rumsfeld to coordinate the propoganda about thermerosol free shots having zero mercury.

Keep up the good work everyone!!!

geauxp (not verified) | 12/13/09 | 13:55 PM

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