This is an admission; I’m old enough to remember the brouhaha about chlorinating the water.

In rural Texas, there was a contingent of anti-government activists who were positive that it was a plot and would turn us all into pinkos or automatons or some variety of alien life. The same contingent has probably given up on avoiding chlorine by now, but with the H1N1 vaccine outbreak, a new version of fear-the-government plots have returned to their ranks.

As usual, the harm from agitation against taking the vaccine can be deadly.

…those most affected by H1N1 are children and pregnant women, and the death rate is already ahead of yearly outbreaks of the standard flu.

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, an advocacy group that questions the safety of vaccines, said the swine flu has “breathed new life” into the cause. “People who have never asked questions before about vaccines are looking at this one,” Ms. Fisher said.

The increased interest is frustrating to health officials, who are struggling to persuade an already wary public to line up for shots and prevent the spread of the pandemic. According to a CBS News poll conducted last week, only 46 percent said they were likely to get the vaccine. The nationwide poll, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, found that while 6 in 10 parents were likely to have their children vaccinated, less than half said they were “very likely to.”

…

Further, vitamin vendors — who in some cases operate blogs, with postings by people who claim to be doctors finding fault with vaccines — are reporting an increase in sales related to swine flu. Michael Angelo, chief research and information officer for eVitamins.com, said sales in September for flu-related products had tripled from last September. The company, he said, has sold 17,565 vitamins that it says protects against the H1N1 virus.

Eureka! Big profits. The deadly results have been seen before, sad to say.

From 2004;

A recent survey of 750 doctors found that 93 percent of pediatricians and 60 percent of family physicians had seen at least one parent who refused to have a child vaccinated in the previous year.

The fallout: Life-threatening childhood diseases are making comebacks. There were 11,647 cases of whooping cough (pertussis) last year, up from 1,707 in 1980, and 13 kids died from it. When a measles outbreak swept through a Pennsylvania boarding school in 2003, a pair of twins–unvaccinated for religious reasons–required hospitalization. Seven others at the school got sick. A national resurgence of measles, which infected 55,467 people and killed 166 between 1989 and 1991, started in Houston, a city with one of the country’s lowest immunization rates.

Snake oil salesmen are a lot more trusted by the right wing extremes and are making their fortunes off of the fears these elements whip up. The outbreak of actual disease has been a bonanza that no doubt proves their divine nature to the gullible. Why else would their divinities have sent such wisdom among us to save us from wicked government plots?

Fear of the government is more than just a peculiarity of the ignorant, it’s a cash cow for health industry outliers who prey on those fears.

Like abstinence-only sex education, it has a multiplier effect as the results of pandemic fears play out.