Both say the organization’s advice to national health authorities led to multimillion dollar waste of public resources. The threat of the virus turned out to be lower than expected, and millions of dozes of previously much-anticipated vaccine are being dumped after expiry. And guess who reaped the fruits?

Pharmaceutical companies, which profit from disease and death, are the natural villains. Regardless of how much money drug companies spend on PR, their image still remains something closer to that of Columbian drug lords, Blackwater hired guns and Goldman Sachs top financial analysts in the public eye.

The UN is notorious for its inability to resolve decades-long conflicts, settle disputes or solve problems – just recall the Food-for-Oil scam in Saddam’s Iraq.

Putting it short, evil transnationals bribed crooked officials to rob poor workers. A story like this could hardly be missed.

The problem with all conspiracy theories is that adepts want to see a plan where none exists. As long as life goes according to a plan, even an evil one, there is no reason to panic, as Batman’s Joker would say. However, chaos born from the combination of individual stupidity or laziness, selfish interests and pure randomness is the force ruling our world.

Do health bureaucrats really need bribes to change their own rules in a way which will give them more media attention and less responsibility? That’s what they did by dropping out an unpredictable future impact of a disease from the description of a pandemic – and they decided on it a year before the swine flu scare.

Do drug producers need to convince politicians to buy vaccines in overwhelming quantities when people cry for protection from the “deadly pandemic”? The pharms’ biggest problem was meeting demand.

Does a professional publicity seeker need a real conspiracy to call for a thorough investigation against alleged culprits? Anything goes when you want to be re-elected, just assume the malice is there and tell the public what it wants to hear.

The best part of the story is that the virus did much less harm than it could have. If things turned out differently, would today’s accusers praise the WHO for its prudence and raising public awareness? Probably not. They’d likely say they didn’t cry “wolf” loud enough.

Alexandre Antonov, RT.