The World Health Organization would have you believe that their campaign on swine flu was effective in preventing world-wide disaster. The truth, however, is their hysterical efforts were about as effective as the guy with the bazooka. If there had been wild elephants or a genuine health risk, the respective efforts may have had some effect.
But there was no threat. Swine flu is no more dangerous than ordinary flu. The reported deaths from swine flu is in the range of 100. The annual death toll from garden variety typhus on a world scale is 30,000.
In the two daily papers received here, one has dropped the swine flu story entirely and the other put the story on about page 20.
And so the WHO's big campaign comes to a whimpering end. Do you think they will offer an apology for needlessly causing so much distress?
Don't count on it. The reality is that the swine flu extravaganza is just the latest in a series of similar scares. There was the 'mad cow' scare in the 1990s which was predicted to kill as many as 500,000 people. So far 150 have died.
Then there was the SARS panic of 2002-2003. Total deaths: 774. And then there was the avian flu panic of 2005. Total deaths: 257.
You would think the WHO would be chagrined by all these mis-steps. But no, they have no shame. In fact their mentors in the cryptocracy view these efforts not as mistakes at all. They consider them key achievements. Why?
From the cryptocracy's point of view a nice world-wide scare every few years is very useful. Such campaigns engender fear. And a fearful world population is a population that can be more easily manipulated.
What do the Church spokesmen have to say about all this? Very little. Jesus said when His disciples saw him walk on water, "Fear not." Gabriel also said this to Zechariah and Marys. Vatican spokesmen also sometimes speak of not having fear. But their exhortations seem to ring hollow or lacking relevance. Why is that?
When Jesus made his statement it was in direct response to actual concrete fears he saw in front of him. He said not to fear when the disciples thought they might be seeing a fearsome ghost. Gabriel also made this statement when his unexpected appearance caused fright.
The Vatican-type statements on fear are of a different quality. Their appeal to not fear is abstract and individualized and not tuned to a concrete fear. Such appeals are not worth very much. Fear is usually very direct and concrete. There is such a thing as generalized fear, which is a dreadful malady. But a call to willfully stop having fear is no help to such a person. There fear is rooted in trauma(s) in the past that must be worked through.
The fear in the world's population stems from not knowing where all the momentous economic, social and political changes of our epoch are taking us. It would seem that the Church spokesmen need to speak to this character of this fear. Someone ought to tell the truth about what is happening in the world, why it is occurring, what it's place in history is, where it is going, and what the faithful need to do. Further that all these big changes are fully known by God, who will make use of them to bring about in the end the Kingdom of God on earth. Faith in God, the Church, and prayer are the appropriate answers to fear.
The Church spokesmen obviously don't do this. Their preferred response to the big changes in the world, is to naively appeal that everyone be reasonable, and remember the poor. The influence of the Church will continue to weaken with such a response. And as a result, fear in the world will continue to grow, making the faithful and everyone else vulnerable to manipulation and panic.
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