Tahitiii wrote:
Yep.
They're creating something out of nothing.
There is no legal definition of "pandemic." It's whatever they want it to be.
"Pandemic" is a medical term. There is no reason for there to be a legal definition of it as there is for the term "insanity". All that "pandemic" means is that a disease has become widespread fairly quickly. The terms "widespread" and "quickly" are made on a disease-by-disease basis.
Swine flu is, by medical definition, a pandemic. Luckily it seems far less deadly than was first feared and also far less deadly than the opther influenza strains that kill thousands every year and for which non-mandatory vaccinations are made available every year. The website you linked which says "protest mandatory vaccination" even says "the vaccine is likely to be voluntary. So even as they acknowledge this as being voluntary, they try to whip people into a frenzy about it being mandatory. Who's using scare tactics now?
I see this as a dress rehearsal for an actual dangerous pandemic. Going into crisis mode over a flu that is apparently less deadly than the annual influenza looks over-reactive. Going into anti-vaccine crisis mode over a vaccine which is apparently no different in kind, availability or level of enforcement as the annual influenza vaccine is ALSO being over-reactive. In any case, the crisis mode does reveal where the biggest flaws are in pandemic management. I think that's what scares the WHO the most. They have a pandemic on their hands and have so far been utterly unable to stop its spread. That it is not a very dangerous pandemic is a relief but it's a relief tempered by the knowledge that if it actually was as dangerous as feared, we'd be toast.