(NaturalNews) You know that "36,000" number the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is constantly throwing around as the number of people in the U.S. who supposedly die every year from influenza? It's completely made up, and its purpose is to sell more flu vaccines, as evidenced by actual mortality data showing that only a few hundred people at most die from influenza annually.

As highlighted by the American Society of Registered Nurses (ASRN), government claims that tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are dying left and right because they aren't getting their flu shots is total bunk. Data pulled from death certificates and the U.S. National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) reveal that very few people die from the flu, suggesting that it really isn't much of a threat.

Compared to almost every other potential cause of death out there, the flu hardly even ranks as a threat. If you're a woman, the data shows that you're more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than from the flu. At most, only about 500 people die every year from the actual flu, and a study published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) suggests that even this number is far too high.

Meanwhile, heart disease and cancer together kill more than 1.1 million people annually, and the government is doing nothing to go after the causes of these deaths. Processed foods, refined sugar, crop pesticides, statin drugs and a host of other legal and subsidized poisons are just a few examples of what really threatens public health, not influenza.

"U.S. data on influenza deaths are a mess," reads a 2005 paper published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) titled "Are U.S. flu death figures more PR than science?"

Most alleged cases of flu death are actually caused by secondary pneumonia

What the CDC isn't telling the public with its grossly overinflated flu death statistics is that most cases of supposed flu death are actually caused by secondary pneumonia infection. The aforementioned study highlights this, questioning why the government seems to tie these two conditions together when there are numerous other causes of pneumonia.

"[W]hy are flu and pneumonia bundled together?" asks the article. "Is the relationship so strong or unique to warrant characterizing them as a single cause of death?"

ASRN responds to these questions with a resounding no, pointing out that things like stomach acid-suppressing drugs are more likely to cause pneumonia than influenza. And yet the latter is what ends up plastered across headlines every year during flu season, an obvious ploy to sell more useless and potentially life-threatening vaccines.

"People don't necessarily die, per se, of the [flu] virus -- the viraemia," said Dr. David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services. "What they die of is a secondary pneumonia."

CDC's shady flu death statistics similar to alleged raw milk deaths

Obfuscating the truth to push an agenda isn't new to the CDC, which plays the same deceptive number tricks with raw milk. Back in 2007, the CDC issued a joint report with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which claimed that raw milk was responsible for dozens of outbreaks and more than 1,000 cases of illness. But as we reported back in 2011, the figures in this report were completely fabricated.

"[I]t's important for the sake of the public record that the CDC's systematic campaign of half truths (that's really what propaganda is) be challenged," wrote David Gumpert for The Complete Patient

Sources:

http://www.asrn.org

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca

http://www.naturalnews.com/z048356_flu_deaths_CDC_statistics_vaccines.html