Thom Hartmann: OK, here’s some of the stuff that I’m getting in e-mail and I'm seeing in the media, and it’s just, you know, flying all over the place. This one is, I’ve probably gotten thirty copies of this, mostly from the usual right-wing sources, this is going out to the same people who getting the Obama-doesn’t-have-a-birth-certificate crowd. I’m on everybody’s mailing list.

“Your Marxist, eugenics government plans to immunize your brain while ruining your immune system. Please read the following”, by Richard Moore, investigative reporter."And some worry that the swine flu shot could be more dangerous than the disease". That’s the subtitle. And it pretty much says the whole thing, so I need not read to you from it.

Here’s another one. This is actually a scientific paper that was published: "Pneumonia and Respiratory Failure from Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1)" and it talks about, you know, some of the very serious problems that come from this swine flu virus, in other words, “uh oh, be afraid”, not necessarily be afraid, I mean, this is just science, but it's like, maybe there is a legitimate concern here.

Here’s another headline. Sebelius Says It Will Be Thanksgiving Before the Majority of Americans Are 'Fully Immunized' Against H1N1". Reality, probably much later than that, and the flu season precedes that.

Here’s another one. This is Maria Cheng with the Associated Press. The headline "Half of health workers reject swine flu shot ". Now, this was actually in Hong Kong. "About half of Hong Kong's health workers would refuse the swine flu vaccine, new research says, a trend that experts say would likely apply worldwide." And of course, the big headline that was on Drudge or the right-wing web sites was, “Half of Health Workers Reject Swine Flu Shot”. And that’s actually an Associated Press story; this isn’t a right-wing crank story.

Here’s another one, Mike Cohen writing, "US Media silent on Swine Flu vaccine link to Nerve disorders", specifically Guillain-Barre syndrome, if I’m pronouncing that right. Which we had in the past, what happened in 1976, twenty-five people died because the government gave vaccine to forty million people. Those twenty-five died not from the swine flu, but from the vaccine. And finally, "US Media silent on Swine Flu vaccine", well that's the same thing.

So we thought, ok, there is mass confusion out here. There is general craziness. There’s a thousand different stories flying in sixteen different directions. Let’s get on somebody who we’ve talked to before. I’ve read her work. I’ve read at least one of her books; I read "The Coming Plague:" several years ago, "Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance". Her newest book, "Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health". She is the Senior Fellow for the Global Health Programme at the Council for Foreign Relations, which is CFR.org She is the only writer to have ever been awarded all three major journalism awards, the Peabody, the Polk ( twice ), and the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer Prize best-selling author, and as I said, Senior Fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations about Global Health, Laurie Garrett.

Laurie Garret, welcome to the show.

Laurie Garrett: Hi.

Thom Hartmann: You know your stuff. I trust you. What’s going on here?

Laurie Garrett: Well, first of all, let’s remind everybody that vaccination is voluntary, and that if you are afraid of it, or you think the government is evil, you can opt out. Nobody is going to make you, at gunpoint, get a vaccine.

Thom Hartmann: Well, actually, isn’t there a suggestion that all schoolchildren should be involuntary vaccinated?

Laurie Garrett: Somebody may have suggested it, but they’re not in the government. It’s not anything anybody officially is suggesting, nor would we even have the capacity to do it. We won’t have enough vaccine in any near term to do such a thing.

Thom Hartmann: OK, so that’s a right-wing paranoia that I'm seeing all over the place?

Laurie Garrett: It’s not on the radar screen.

Thom Hartmann: Ok.

Laurie Garrett: Let’s go into a couple of the allegations being made. First of all, many people are of the belief that vaccines generally are dangerous. So, they fall in one box, and that’s a box that says “I don’t care what it’s for – measles, polio, pertussis, hepatitis, whatever. I’m against it.” Ok, put them over there. They’ve got their belief system. It is not, and I repeat not, grounded in solid science. The second group…..

Thom Hartmann: Although there have some times in the past, particularly thirty, forty, fifty years ago, when vaccines were kind of dicey, or there have been a few occasions when they were, but the modern day vaccines are relatively safe. Particularly for an adult.

Laurie Garrett: Absolutely. I mean, I think clearly there are manufacturers that are sloppier than other manufacturers. There are classic examples of vaccines in the past. We can all think of the Cutter Institute, the Cutter incident way back in the Salk-Sabin polio vaccine days, but these are not things that by and large ought to be troubling people. OK, then the next category of resistance has to do with the idea that because in 1976 with the swine flu fiasco, a couple of dozen people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, that all flu vaccines are by definition somehow dangerous. And this comes up every single year, even with seasonal vaccination, and there certainly are people who refuse on principle, with the firm belief that it’s somehow dangerous to them to get vaccinated seasonally. That is their prerogative. And it’s their prerogative to refuse this one as well.

Thom Hartmann: But what is Guillain-Barre syndrome, and why was it associated with the swine flu vaccine back in '76, and why would it not be, or is it potentially associated with this one?

Laurie Garrett: The swine flu vaccine in '76 was made in great haste and used using technologies that have been improved since then. And Guillain-Barre syndrome is a very unusual immunological syndrome where your immune system starts to attack your own neurological system, and people had neurological disorders, and in a handful of cases it was lethal. The ultimate lawsuit tab against the Federal government, because you may remember Thom, back then Gerald Ford, the Republican President at the time, told Congress we were facing a dire situation, and that Congress should absorb all liability. That will never happen again, no way, because of what happened in that case.

Thom Hartmann: But hasn’t Congress already said that vaccine manufacturers cannot be held liable?

Laurie Garrett: They’ve said the manufacturers can’t be held liable, but they haven’t said and therefore you can sue the government.

Thom Hartmann: So there is nobody you can sue.

Laurie Garrett: Well, I;'m not sure... I’m not an expert on the legal aspect; you’ll have to talk to somebody else about that.

Thom Hartmann: OK. But the bottom line is, Guillain - how do you say it again?

Laurie Garrett: Guillain-Barre.

Thom Hartmann: Guillain-Barre is not something that has been popping up with frequency in the last decade or so around vaccines. Is that an accurate statement?

Laurie Garrett: That is accurate. It’s also accurate to say that the original allegations of the scope of the Guillain-Barre syndrome problem were greatly inflated because of that legal apparatus, so you had every lawyer, you know, licking his chops over it.

Thom Hartmann: “Have you been harmed by the vaccine? call 1-800 ...”

Laurie Garrett: Exactly, exactly, and people did, and well over a billion dollars worth of lawsuits were filed. But ultimately, many years down the road, it took more than a decade for all these cases to wend their way through the Federal courts. In the end, only a handful of payouts were made.

Thom Hartmann: Ok, so I guess that the carry home message here is: Number one - Don’t worry about the vaccine. Number two – The flu, this swine flu that’s coming, while it is not the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, it is more virulent than a normal flu. How seriously should be we taking this, and should the average person go out of their way to get vaccinated this year?

Laurie Garrett: So in terms of what this H1N1 swine flu really means, I look at it on a couple of levels at the same time.

Thom Hartmann: We have about a minute and a half.

Laurie Garrett: Oh. Ok, well then the bottom line if we only have a minute and a half is that you should take it seriously, but not be panicked. You should follow your public health authority's best advice on what to do. And you should be especially concerned about young adults and adolescents because they appear to be at highest risk.

Thom Hartmann: Because their immune systems are the strongest, and what gets you sick with a virus, is that your immune system's response to that virus, not the virus itself.

Laurie Garrett: That is true, but we also think that people who are older may have been exposed to a virus that offered some similarity and therefore you’re slightly immune.

Thom Hartmann: So that’s older than what? Fifty, older than sixty, older than seventy?

Laurie Garrett: You had to have been infected before 1957.

Thom Hartmann: So if you were born before ’57, and there’s any possibility you had the flu back then, you might not have a problem with this flu?

Laurie Garrett: Maybe.

Thom Hartmann: Maybe. Very, very interesting. And we’re looking at, you know, they're predicting ninety thousand deaths in the United States. Typically we have around thirty six thousand deaths, a year?

Laurie Garrett: Yes.

Thom Hartmann: So this is not going to knock down millions of us like the Spanish Flu did.

Laurie Garrett: The biggest risk right now in the short-term, assuming the virus does not mutate and change in any way, and remains a relatively mild virus, is that because it appears to be so incredibly contagious, more so than routine flu, we could have a huge surge of cases happening all across the country in roughly the same six week period, and that would overwhelm our hospitals.

Thom Hartmann: So that really needs to be the focus of public health workers, getting our hospitals ready. Making sure that we have enough respirators, things like that.

Laurie Garrett: Yes. That’s what the White House says.

Thom Hartmann: There you go. Ok, interesting, good. Laurie Garrett, Council on Foreign Relations, cfr.org. She’s the Global Health Program Senior Fellow, and check out her books, “Betrayal of Trust” and “The Coming Plague”. Thank you, Laurie.

Laurie Garrett: Thank you.

Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.