[Marxism] Flu epidemic mortality drops dramatically -- a taleof the undead

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Shane Mage writes: <<This sounds right...but didn't you, just one hour
earlier, acquit Smithfield on the grounds that none of the many La Gloria
residents, living around that hog-hell, who had been suffering from
"flu-like"   illnesses for the previous month, have been confirmed positive
to the H1N1 virus?>>

I know this will sound ridiculous to most people on this list, not sharing
the proclivities of the audience I have in mind, but to rational,
intelligent people the ABSENCE of evidence does not, in and of itself,
constitute evidence.

Thus, apart from the saved sample from this ONE pre-schooler, there is
NOTHING to suggest that the La Gloria outbreak was an H1N1 outbreak. For the
reasons I explained, that makes the test results of this one sample the
phenomenon to be investigated and accounted for, given the ABSENCE of an
H1N1 virus outbreak in the locality.

This is a different matter than, for example, an assertion that only 25 of
the 50 tested samples were positive for swine flu, or even just 5. Then a
case might be constructed based on the hypothesis that there are a large
number of false negatives. But with just ONE sample testing positive, the
hypothesis  becomes that this one sample is anomalous: either a false
positive or a unique case in the locality epidemiologically unrelated to the
other cases.

I have no interest in acquitting or convicting Smithfield's half-owned farm
in Mexico. I DO have an interest in American leftists who are so hapless
they flail about, polemical rapiers in hand, cut off their OWN heads, and
then proudly hold their own heads up high, as if they were intent to prove
to all and sundry that there are no brains in them.

Here's the latest piece of garbage to have been deposited on this list: A
piece from the bourgeois opportunist/liberal Huffington Post by Leslie
Hatfield:

"As I wrote earlier this week, the virus formerly known as the swine flu
(although the CDC continues to say that indeed the H1N1 strain does, as
initially reported, contain swine, human and avian virus components) seems
quite likely to have links to an industrial hog operation in the La Gloria
community where the outbreak was believed to have started, although new
information suggests that this strain of the flu may actually have origins
in the US as well as Asia."

Now, let's analyze what we're being told. First that is "seems" that H1N1
"quite likely" is going to have "links" to the hog factory. I will go
further. I will assert CATEGORICALLY that the H1N1 virus is "linked" to the
Rockefellers, the Vatican, the Zionist Entity and Dick Cheney. Multiple
links. First, there's the fact they are ALL not just in the solar system,
but on planet earth. Then there's the matter of the shared atmosphere:
they're all part of a microscopically thin biosphere (speaking
metaphorically, of course). And the truly damning evidence that they are
bound together in the VERY SAME gravitational field.

"Link" is a journalistic weasel word used to suggest not just what the
writer can't prove, but would likely be sued for were it to be asserted.
Unless the exact nature of the "LINK" is explicated, it means absolutely
nothing. 

Of course, the "link" being suggested is that the pig factory is the origin
of the swine flu. This is done through the weasel-phrase, "where the
outbreak was believed to have started." Notice the past-tense passive voice
"was believed." By whom? When? For what reason? What happened to said belief
that the author refers to it in the past tense ("was believed") instead of
the present ("is believed")?

Then there's the following clause: "although new information suggests that
this strain of the flu may actually have origins in the US as well as Asia."
Not to mention Canada. But what interests me in the actual PROOF left by our
author that s/he doesn't have a clue what is being talked about. And that is
the assertion that this strain of the flu "may actually have origins in the
US as well as Asia." 

In the sense in which origins is being used here, what is asserted is
utterly nonsensical. The strain could have its origins in the United States
*OR* Asia, but almost certainly NOT in both at the same time, for either the
Asian-found strain originated with the Americans or vice versa: the odds
that the VERY SAME virus evolved independently on two continents at the same
time are the same as the proverbial gang of monkeys typing out the collected
works of Shakespeare: easy enough given an infinite amount of time, quite
impossible in real time.

So here is where we stand: the pig farm-swine flue connection has been
reduced to an apparent ("seems") possible ("quite likely") undefined
association ("links"). Or it may not exist at all ("although"). Who knows? 

This is an entirely content free exposition. And yet someone felt it so
significant that they had to share it with us here.

Joaquin