Sneeze in your sleeve.  It’s only a pandemic.

Once again, we are being warned of an impending flu pandemic.  Current estimates are that even a moderate pandemic strain could kill half-a-million Americans.

Last year’s American flu vaccine shortfall – which was merely the latest and worst in a series of such shortages – proves that the same American government that can spend hundreds of billons of dollars on the Neocon’s Iraq disaster is unwilling to take seriously the health of the populace.  Of course, the government did interfere with vaccine distribution, to make sure that “high-risk” groups got their shots – “high risk” being old farts who vote in elections.  Young children, meanwhile, are deprived of vaccine in favor of the geritol set.

Of course, research shows that it is better to vaccinate school kids.  But, hey, kids don’t vote.  And even though their parents may, not everyone is so self-obsessed as the elderly, who always seem to base their votes on social security and other selfish “interest-group”-related issues.

I remember Chimpoleon lying during the Presidential debates about how “help was on the way” (ie, more vaccine to make up the shortfall).  Funny – I didn’t see any more becoming available when it was needed.  Of course, once the flu season was mostly over reports of “excess vaccine going to waste” started to surface.  All in all, a model of efficiency!  And there are no signs of improvement.  There may well be another vaccine shortage this year.  And, when – not if – a pandemic hits, one can expect to find the American government completely unprepared for the eventuality despite, literally, years of warnings.

Now, much can be done if the will and the interest exists.  The production methods for new flu vaccines can be overhauled to incorporate updated echnologies.  A comprehensive plan can be developed and implemented to quickly identify pandemic strains, produce sufficient vaccine and distribute it to ALL in need.  Sufficient vaccine should be made ready for every flu season - pandemic or not - and anti-viral medications stockpiled (but … see below).  Certainly, this would cost only a fraction of the monies spent on Iraq, no?

But, alas, the will is not there.  Obviously, no one cares sufficiently that Americans may die?  Now, if the neoconservatives decided that protecting Americans from the flu was somehow in the interests of … oh, let’s say Israel, then I could guarantee that his Chimpiness would be on the White House lawn to announce the new “Czar of Homeland Flu Security” and the investment of billions of dollars in the programs outlined above.  But, no.  The possibility of half a million or more dead Americans is insufficient motivation for a government intent on genocidal replacement immigration … a government spending time and money to dig up 40-50 year old “civil rights cases” for prosecution (meanwhile, for some “strange” reason, there is no official interest in re-opening the black-on-white “Zebra” killings from the early 70s, despite the urging of the EAIF) … a government that invades Iraq for non-existent WMDs while North Korea is building the real thing and the missiles to carry them.  But then, those nukes will be aimed at the USA, not another nation apparently closer to the Bush heart ...

One is bound to ask whether the America government exists to serve the American people or not.  The answer is that the American serfs exist to serve the American government.  Flu pandemic?  Just as long as Saddam isn’t around to fire SCUDs at Israel, all is well with the world.  Anyhow, if a pandemic hits, the CDC can repeat the same sterling, medically modern advice it offered frightened Americans during last year’s vaccine shortage: sneeze in your sleeve.

Isn’t it grand to live in the “greatest country on Earth?”

By the way, the next pandemic is most likely to originate in the usual influenza-spawning ground of the Far East.  This report suggests that those wonderfully inscrutable, cognitive-elitist Chinese are doing all they can to make sure that the next pandemic to emerge from their overcrowded, festering land is resistant to a leading antiviral drug.

Who knows?  Maybe this is an attrition strategy.  The Chinese can spare millions of flu-dead.  The declining populations of the West cannot.

We’ll all find out soon enough.

Posted by JW Holliday on Friday, June 24, 2005 at 06:38 PM in U.S. Politics
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