Ukraine Pandemic: Black Death or Over-Hyped Flu?

This article certainly paints a scary picture:

The biggest story on the Planet today is the outbreak of a very serious Advanced Biological War virus in Europe. The second biggest story on the Planet is the suppression of this story for almost two weeks by the corporate owned mainstream news media.

There is a lot we know and a lot that we can only speculate on about what is unfolding in Central Europe. We know that in mid-October, less than a month ago, there was a growing number of cases of what many thought was Swine Flu (A/H1N1) in the western part of the Ukraine. We know that many hundreds if not thousands of people in western Ukraine witnessed low flying light airplanes aerosol spraying something over Ukrainian cities during the days of October 29, 2009 and October 31, 2009. We know that beginning the night of October 29th, massive numbers of people begin to get very sick. We know that the Ukraine government issued a statement denying that it was doing any aerial spraying to combat the growing disease or authorizing any spraying over Ukrainian cities. We know that by October 30th, the Ukrainian authorities closed all schools for three weeks and banded public gatherings.

We do NOT know what disease the people were/are coming down with. We do know that doctors are describing the disease as Pneumonic Plague, or as some type of hemorrhagic fever, or as hemorrhagic influenza, or as hemorrhagic pneumonia. We know that the illness, whatever it is, does not appear to be A/H1N1. We do not know if the disease is a recombination of A/H1N1 with other viruses or some totally different virus or if it is in fact a virus. We know that the World Health Organization (WHO) has had several days to sequence the genes of the disease but has failed to release this data.

We know that WHO has NOT called for the quarantining of the Ukraine or the shutdown of all global travel to/from the area of infection and that this is the same thing that they did when Mexican Swine Flu (A/H1N1) first broke out and that the failure to contain that virus early on ensured its spread throughout the world.

We know that the internal temperature of the lungs of those with a terminal case of what many are calling ‘Ukrainian Plague’ is often from 130F to 135F. We do know that autopsies show that the lungs are filled with blood, and are black in color, and that the lung tissue has turned to mush. We know that patients who first show any signs of illness usually crash in less than 48 hours, sometimes the same day.

It's not quite true that there has been a blackout on this story though-- it is just that it hasn't gotten a tremendous amount of attention. Some mainstream articles indicate something unusual is happening in Ukraine, such as here and here. But articles like this and this paint a much more sanguine portrait of the Ukrainian situation. My gut feeling is that the Ukraine situation is mostly hype, but that would mean I am agreeing with Anne Applebaum of the WaPo and the WHO, who can't be trusted. So it's really hard to know what's going on. It's certainly possible that there have been far more deaths than officially reported, and news of these are being suppressed. But I tend to doubt that.

One thing I know for sure though-- I love Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's hairstyle!