Friday 11 December 2009

Liam Donaldson: Serial Scaremongering Failure


This is priceless from Lardy Liam.

The swine flu pandemic is "considerably less lethal" than feared, chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson says.

"The first influenza pandemic of the 21st century is considerably less lethal than was feared in advance."

It was flu, Liam, no-one has feared flu since German soldiers wore helmets with pointy metal bits on the top.

Well no-one, that is, except Heat magazine obsessed checkout operatives, attention seekers with a runny nose, furrow-browed local council overthinkers, hypochondriacs, panicky gym-addicted health freaks, OAPs who still live in a past where doctors were considered wise, risk-phobic primary school teachers and the kids they infect with their hysteria, people who fall for e-mail scare spam, OCD sufferers who would shame Howard Hughes, sheep, the morbid, Dot Cotton, and just about anyone who takes Casualty seriously.

OK, quite a lot of people feared swine flu. None more so, however, than highly-paid, saggy-arse health professionals called Liam fucking Donaldson. And, do you know what? I think the worries of the former can be directly linked to the quite laughable over-reaction and fearmongering of the latter.

The veritable panic storm whipped up by this hideous over-filled skin sack in April was stunning.

Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the government's chief medical adviser, said: "Phase five indicates that WHO considers a global pandemic to be imminent, whereas at phase four a global pandemic is not inevitable. A change to phase five is a signal to countries' governments to ramp up their pandemic preparations – which we are already doing. We have been planning for a situation like this for some years.

Just like the 'look at me' Donaldson-led panic over SARS and Avian Flu. He, remember, was the doom-monger who advocated closing all schools earlier this year. The same guy whose advice to government was, apparently, to prepare the body bags, commandeer mortuaries and dig, dig, dig.

The government is planning to create a series of mass graves to cope with a second outbreak of swine flu in the autumn.

Whitehall officials are also speaking to coffin makers to see if they could meet demands.

Retired doctors may also be called back to work to issue death certificates so GPs can focus on patients.

There was only one person in the UK who created this fear, Liam. It was you. And as UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom pointed out in the summer, you are never correct.



It was the fucking flu, that's all. Yet, on the say so of this serial failure, the more gullible in our society descended into a gibbering, boggle-eyed, head-clutching meltdown.

The rest of us went about daily life without feeling the need to overdose on orange juice, Lemsip and Vicks nasal spray, no matter the increasing urgency of Liam's ego-induced predictions of imminent catastrophe. The Daily Mash put it best in July.

CONCERN was growing last night that the British public is not freaking out quite as much as it was supposed to.

In the last week the government, the media and a range of experts have all thrown more resources at their swine flu panic inducement strategies, including a series of contradictory announcements, random, blood-curdling death tolls and a warning that Britain's fleet of ice cream vans will be needed to store all the dead bodies.

But despite their all-out efforts, millions of people across the country have decided to simply wash their hands twice a day and accept that if they do get swine flu the chances of them dying from it are so small as to be really quite tedious.

Nevertheless the department of health will today urge people to empty their freezers, stressing that is where they will have to store their grandmother until the army can collect her and throw her into a landfill.

Why not just come out and admit it, Liam. You fucked up. Again. Couching your words in such a fashion that it would appear we were all in fear of our very existence is wholly misleading.

You, alone, created the many miles of column copy and the undivided BBC web attention for a good week. It was the word of one miserablist cock, fishing for a WHO placement, against the sanity of those in possession of perspective.

And in doing so, Lardy boy yet again spread fear, panic, costly bandwagon-jumping, and unnecessary anxiety amongst the many who are, unfortunately, led by ignorance, a naïve belief in healthist theocracy, and a lack of a spine.

One can only hope that once Donaldson is kicked out, we get a CMO who will give advice more conducive to the UK public growing a pair of balls. A CMO who can actually see his own without a mirror would be a good start.




13 comments:

thespecialone said...

I couldnt agree more

Captain Ranty said...

Love it, love it, love it!!

A great piece. I don't spose it will stop Sir Liar Donaldson from over-hyping the next big threat to us all.

Someone drown the gobshite.

Please.

CR.

Christopher Snowdon said...

It was obvious from the earliest days that swine flu was not going to be a major killer. Since it never really took off in Mexico City - one of the world's most crowded metropolises - it was never likely to do so elsewhere.

Within a week of the first cases in Mexico, it was clear that swine flu was very contagious but rarely life-threatening. The opposite of SARS, in fact, which Donaldson also generated panic about.

The money wasted on this nonsense has been scandalous.

Laurence said...

Very funny piece. Sadly accurate too.

Pogo said...

The man appears to have been totally wrong on just about every health scare since he became the top man. How someone so utterly fucking stupid and inept can become both a professor and a "Sir" must surely be one of the biggest condemnations of both academia and enoblement...

Frank Davis said...

You forgot to mention his lead role in pushing for the smoking ban, threatening to resign at one point if he didn't get his way.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I had always assumed (along with e.g. Snowdon) that Swine Flu was just another statist Climate of Fear-type exercise combined with corporatism. This was just a knee jerk sort of feeling, but as usual, I was right.

Only one day I'll be wrong, that's the worrying bit.

@ CR, you can't drown the fat fucker, he will float any which way up.

Anonymous said...

Shame the big fat ugly cunt didn't resign as he threatened when he forced the smoking ban through with NO exemptions.
I hope he dies a painful lingering death.

Angry Exile said...

Let's not underplay the seriousness of 'flu - it really does kill people. Surely the point is that Donaldson and his fellow doom mongers kept mentioning Spanish 'Flu killing millions during WW1 and painting a picture of swine 'flu potentially causing havoc, overwhelmed hospitals, mass deaths and deserted cities looking like something out of Twenty Eight Days Later... or possibly Canberra. The reality is that, as Snowdon says, it looked from early on like it was no worse than most other varieties - a few who caught were certainly going to die, but most who caught it were going to feel shit for a week, possibly wishing they'd die, and then get better.

@ Captain Ranty and Mark Wadsworth, why not push him off a boat in the NW Pacific somewhere? With luck someone will harpoon the fat prick before he floats back to shore.

Rob Farrington said...

Does he do football predictions?

Only, I could really do with an additional income from betting with high confidence on the exact opposite of what he says he expects will happen.

MTG said...

Only bad eggs could say such unkind things of a man who never overcame the stigma of a duck for a parent.

Neal Asher said...

An attention seeking prick like all politicians. Appearing on TV is more important to them than any bothersome truth.

Sam Duncan said...

hypochondriacs,

That's me, then. Seriously though, if you'd seen my father about ten years ago, laid up for a fortnight and definitely close to croaking it, you wouldn't be so flippant about 'flu.

Having said that, it's definitely the case that this isn't the second coming of 1919's Spanish epidemic that was advertised by the likes of Donaldson. I know a bloke with two forms of cancer - among other ailments - who took it a day or two after his 70th birthday, and he was walking around like nothing had happened in less than a week.