It was a little over a year ago (~ April 2009) that news reports about the H1N1 flu were spreading like wildfire. Assuming you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 13 months, then you’ve experienced first hand the paranoia, confusion and mass hysteria that accompanies an outbreak of infectious disease.

I think it’s safe to say that we all were pretty spooked when the first reports of this deadly illness started emanating out of Mexico. Then when the infection numbers started to climb in California and ultimately here in Canada, well there was a mad rush to do everything and anything possible to keep the flu away.

The Canadian government was quick to launch into flu prevention mode. In fact, the government committed to purchasing $400 million dollars worth of vaccine on top of launching a massive advertising campaign to convince everyone to run out and get vaccinated.

But something was lost amidst all this pandemic paranoia. It seemed that no one was prepared to take a deep breath and actually look at what we objectively knew about the H1N1 virus or flu viruses in general. Well that’s not true. Big government officials didn’t seem prepared to objectively look at the data, but many independent health researcher types (shameless self-promotion) did… and it was pretty alarming what was found.

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