The fat guy with the leather jacket and sawed off shotgun says there are no motorcycle gangs operating in our city.

No H1N1 conspiracy — medical officer:

You may have heard that the swine flu vaccination program is actually a cover for a government plan to kill people.

Or it’s just a scheme to fatten the wallets of pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer, has heard many conspiracy theories and rumours. It’s not making his mission of persuading people to get the H1N1 vaccine any easier.

"There are certain segments of society that don’t trust the government," he said Thursday. "It’s all a conspiracy to depopulate the world, that it’s sponsored by organized crime."

As the province gears up for its immunization program next week, he hopes common sense will prevail over the Internet fringe element.

Now usually "internet fringe element" is code for Third Edge of the Sword but in this case its quite clear that Dr. Strang is right. While there may be some valid reasons for a person not to get the vaccine, that's a matter for individual decisions. I for one am unlikely to go for it, I don't see much need. It is also, of course, clear that while there may be shady things governments and Big Pharma can get up to, any fool can see that the Swine Flu vaccination program was brought in by governments with at least the noble goals of reducing the cases of flu in the interest of maintaining public health.

Now there are some less-than-desirable decisions being made. Friday evening President Monkey declared a state of national Swine Flu emergency throughout the United States, and its pretty clear as well such a declaration is a serious overkill. While 1 in 5 children in America "had symptoms of H1N1" as the article states, there's nothing saying that they have H1N1, just that they seem to have the flu. 20% of children getting the flu during flu season just isn't the disaster scenario you would expect. To date most of the comments are about incompetance over Obama's government-run healthcare not getting enough vaccine and examining its implications if the undesirable public option is ever passed.

However, the conspiracy minded could easily see some issues here. Already some people are being forced to take the flu vaccine (though some technical malfunctions make this statement untrue). Combine a mandatory 'vaccination' with what a state of emergency empowers governments to do and you can see how conspiracy theories can form. This is what Dr. Strang was trying to discount, and I believe strongly there is no government conspiracy.

On the other hand, if you do believe there's a government conspiracy to force people to receive mystery injections under the auspices of "national health crisis", its hard to believe this will change anybody's mind. Why? Dr. Robert Strang is Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer. In the event of any government conspiracy, he's the first person the conspiracy recruits (or plants). Basically the man who would be the lynchpin of any conspiracy denies the conspiracy exists. Sorry Dr. Strang but you are pissing into the wind here.