With the declared emergency, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius now has authority to bypass federal rules when opening alternative care sites, such as offsite hospital centers at schools or community centers. What else this paves the way for Sebelius to do has as yet gone unreported by the Obama lapdog media.
The AP is reporting that the "national emergency declaration" was the second of two steps needed to give Sebelius extraordinary powers during a crisis.
"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communitties, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," wrote Obama in Saturday's declaration.
"Many millions" of Americans have had swine flu so far, according to an estimate that CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden gave Friday. The government doesn't test everyone to confirm swine flu so it doesn't have an exact count. How many millions do you imagine "many millions" is? If I have "many" oranges in a bag, then do I have more than five oranges? He could have used the word "several" millions--"several" is an indefinite word, more than two but less than many. But instead he said "many" millions. I don't think if I had five oranges in a bag, I would say I had "many" oranges. I think 5 oranges would still be "several." I think it would take at least 7 or 8 oranges for me to say I had "many" oranges in the bag. So does that mean we've had 7 or 8 millions of American cases of H1N1 flu? He also said there have been more than 20,000 hospitalizations. So if we've had 8 million cases of swine flu and 20,000 hospitalizations, then that means that 0.25% of the H1N1 cases ended up hospitalized. And this is a national emergency? How different are these numbers from the normal seasonal flu that killed 56,000 Americans in 2006? I guess we'll find out.
Quoted from Breitbart: The EMEA's committee for medicinal products for human use reiterated recommendations from September that the three H1N1 vaccines -- Celvapan, Focetria and Pandemrix -- should be taken as two doses at least three weeks apart. But according to the limited data available so far, one dose for Pandemrix and Focetria may be enough, it added. So I guess even if a person gets the H1N1 vaccine, organizations like EMEA are still arguing that it may not be effective.
OK, SO WAIT A MINUTE. What am I missing here?
- "Many millions" in the U.S. have already had H1N1." But we don't have an "exact count" because we don't test everyone (my guess is, they don't test anyone, unless they're on a ventilator in ICU or unless they die) to see if they have H1N1. So does this mean we get to make up numbers? I don't trust this freaking government to tell me the truth about anything.
- Approximately 1,000 people in the U.S. have died. That's really horrible if you or a family member is one of those 1,000, but there have been "many millions" of cases and only 1,000 deaths? So again, using our handy definition of "many" as 8 million, and doing the math, then 0.0125% of the people who have H1N1 flu have died. I don't want to seem cold, but that seems like a pretty low number to me, especially considering that almost no one has been vaccinated yet--about 10 million out of 300 million, or 1/30th of the population, if most of those doses have found their way into people, which I doubt.
- Despite the federal government's initial optimistic estimate that as many as 120 million doses of the vaccine would be available by mid-October, only about 11 million doses have reached health departments for distribution to clinics and doctors offices. Play along with me here: At your job, if you deliver less than 10% of what you promised, and also in your job you're dealing with something on the level of a NATIONAL EMERGENCY, do you keep your job? I'm just askin'.
- The EMEA (European Medicines Agency) is still unsure, because of "limited data available" whether people need one dose of the vaccine or two. But is the Obama Lapdog Media reporting that inconvenient little detail in the American press? Anybody?
Mark my words. I can see it like I'm looking at a crystal ball.
Update: Well, I was wrong. There was very little said today on the Sunday morning talk shows about the H1N1 influenza "emergency." Evidently having the White House declare a national emergency isn't newsworthy. Of course had they talked about it in any depth at all, uncomfortable questions might have been asked about issues like vaccine availability.
Update #2: I'm thinking the White House must hate the Washington Examiner about as much as they hate Fox News. I get a lot of good stuff from their online publication. I got this from an opinion piece by Mark Tapscott, quoting Kathleen Sebelius about the "ample supply" of H1N1 flu vaccine that would be available by mid-October: "We're on track to have an ample supply rolling by the middle of October. But we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October. We'll get the vaccine out the door as fast as it rolls off the production line."
And Tapscott points to an obvious conclusion, which perhaps is one reason why Obama's NATIONAL EMERGENCY didn't lead the Sunday shows: These are the same government officials who will be in charge of your health care under the government-run health care system being sought by Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress.
Farther down in the article, Tapscott quotes one of my favorite journalists, Henry L. Mencken, the bad boy of Baltimore. Keep in mind that Mencken did the bulk of his adult work in the 1910s through 1930s, so obviously we've seen this shit from the government before, something I keep trying with little success to tell the people around me. From Mencken: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Thanks for the reminder, Henry. By the way, Mrs. Dunn, one of my favorite philosophers, one whom I turn to the most, is H.L. Mencken.
H.L. Mencken, having a beer with his breakfast. Where have all the guys like him gone?
No comments:
Post a Comment