Remember the Swine Flu Panic of 2009? No, You Don’t

Rush Limbaugh
Contact Your Elected Officials

I went back and looked at the stats and I was stunned. Are you ready for this? The swine flu outbreak in this country in 2009 and 2010, 60 million Americans were infected. Do you remember that? Sixty million were infected. Dr. Siegel, one of the Fox doctors was on TV explaining this last night. He was not my primary source for it, but he ended up confirming it. Sixty million people were infected.

Do you know how many people were hospitalized in 2009-2010 with the swine flu? Three hundred thousand were hospitalized. So 60 million people infected, 300,000 hospitalized. And nobody even remembers it. And why? Well, because we had a different president. We had a Democrat president by the name of Barack Obama, and the news then was how wonderfully well Obama was handling it, how expertly well Obama was dealing with it.

There wasn’t any media panic. The Republican Party did not politicize it at all. They made not one single effort that anybody can find or remember to try to make political hay out of it. It was treated as a health issue from top to bottom. Sixty million Americans infected, 300,000 hospitalized. I don’t know what the death toll was. The numbers with the coronavirus are not even close. They are barely a fraction of a percentage compared to the swine flu.

CDC Estimates of 2009 H1N1 Influenza Cases, Hospitalizations and Deaths in the United States

During the pandemic, CDC provided estimates of the numbers of 2009 H1N1 cases, hospitalizations and deaths on seven different occasions. Final estimates were published in 2011. These final estimates were that from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010 approximately 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (8868-18,306) occurred in the United States due to pH1N1. These final estimates are available at: Estimating the burden of 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) in the United States (April 2009-April 2010), Shrestha SS, et al., Clin Infect Dis. 2011 Jan 1;52 Suppl 1:S75-82.

Below are links to the different estimates published, including the final estimates.

April – October 17, 2009 Estimates
April – November 14, 2009 Estimates
April – December 12, 2009 Estimates
April 2009 – January 16, 2010 Estimates
April 2009 – February 13, 2010 Estimates
April 2009 – March 13, 2010 Estimates
Final Estimates Published in May 2011

Biden Doesn't Have Americans Best Interest At Heart