Why the deaths are much higher...(NaturalNews) Much to the annoyance of some critics, NaturalNews has been publicly questioning the "official" statistics reporting infections and deaths from H1N1 influenza. In stories published this week, we noted that the CDC's official numbers are suspiciously low -- the agency claimed only 7 deaths from H1N1 even while Mexico had officially announced 161 deaths.
Today, NaturalNews has learned why the CDC numbers are so low. It turns out that CDC labs are inadequate testing facilities that are utterly overwhelmed with too many influenza samples to test. Thus, the reason why official CDC "confirmed" H1N1 death numbers are so low is simply because the CDC laboratories can't test very many flu samples in the first place.
And remember this: The CDC doesn't count any death unless its own lab confirms the infection. But its own lab can only test 100 flu samples a day, we've learned!
CDC labs are "swamped," reports the Associated Press. "The specimens are coming in faster than they can possibly be tested," reports epidemiologist Dr. Jeffrey P. Davis, according to AP.
Other astonishing facts worth noting:
• New York has had to limit its testing of influenza because too many samples are coming in. "Sure, we'd want to diagnose every case, but we don't have that resource," said Dr. Don Weiss.
• U.S. states have no way to test for H1N1 on their own. They must send samples to the CDC, and the CDC lab can only test about 100 samples a day. (Source: Michael Shaw, associate director for laboratory science at the CDC.)
• "Many labs are overrun," says AP, to the point where they are only testing samples that come from people who traveled to Mexico. Other samples are simply ignored or thrown out.
• AP also reports this quote: "The capacity of the state laboratories to test all the swabs is being exceeded..." - Dr. Paul Jarris of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
• The acting director of the CDC has admitted it may stop testing influenza samples altogether! Why? They say it's more important to focus on detection of community outbreaks than to get an exact count of H1N1 deaths. Thus, the "death count" becomes an abandoned number that loses any scientific credibility at all.
Why the CDC cannot produce accurate numbers
From all this, it should be abundantly clear that not only was NaturalNews correct in stating that the CDC's numbers are artificially low, but also that the CDC is incapable of determining accurate numbers due to the severe limitations of its laboratories. In fact, the CDC openly admits this fact.
Thus, all those people and reporters who downplay H1N1 influenza by saying, "It's only killed 7 people" are delusional. The real truth of the matter is that the number of people killed by H1N1 greatly exceeds these "official" numbers, and yet we'll never know by how much because no one apparently has the laboratory bandwidth to make this determination.
From a scientific standpoint, then, the only truly accurate statement that can be made about this is that H1N1 deaths are greater than six. How much greater? No one knows.
Why does any of this matter? Because people are under the great misimpression that H1N1 has killed "only" 7 people (or 10 as of today, as the CDC has added 3 deaths to its "confirmed" list). Therefore, people say, it's no big deal.
But the number of "confirmed" deaths is merely the product of an overwhelmed, under-staffed CDC laboratory system that is backlogged beyond all hope and can't even get to most of the samples it's being sent. Those who claim that websites, states or individuals are "overreacting to a virus that has only killed 7 people" are kidding themselves. The number of dead is much, much higher than what the CDC has been able to confirm.
