While some are pointing to the so-far overblown response to this H1N1 virus, and the predictable manner in which the media jumped on this to add to what seems like an overblown reaction, I am thankful for those so-called CDC and WHO bureaucrats and researcher-epidemiologists that work very hard for very little $$$, after obtaining very high class science educations, to be able to jump into action on any scale you may call overblown merely on the "potential" that this particular outbreak presents. Make fun of the bureaucracy all you want, but they will be your best friends should one of these pandemics turn ultra virulent (and one of these strains will go crazy one of these times). And, this isn't over according to some people interviewed in that same media that tend to overblow things; people a lot smarter than I or Lou Duran when it comes to science of this thing. Some say due to the waning flu season, this could be just an incubator for a real virulent strain to emerge in the real season in fall (just apparently like the 1918 outbreak that did kill 60 million people world wide).
So if you have your panties in a wad over all this right wing nut-job commentary that is trying to wrap the Obama admin around the notion of some manner of conspiratorial design to take over the entire health care complex with a trojan horse health care scare, just chalk this all up to a good dress rehearsal for a response to the big one, when it does finally come. Even the Bush admin had to learn something in the live exercise of Katrina, as well as many local and state admins learned how not to do things in such a disaster. Lets hope that the geeky scientists at the CDC do have a good handle on this one, and that we will have enough innoculations in the fall and they guess the virus morph characteristics of it enough to produce the amount of effective innoculants that would be needed for the population.
Lou, you need to go back before the last 100 to find where socialism took hold in this country for good. It started officially on Sept 19, 2008 when Bush admin officials Bernacke and Paulson called the congress leaders in and scarred the crap out of them to spend our future prosperity and started us down the path of socialising all the losses from those 'masters of the capitalism universe' and yet decided to continue to reward themselves for their missdeeds anyway. I hope you don't have occasion to wish those bonuses would go to the lowly bureaucratic scientists at the CDC, if we all need a medical bailout to just live.
If I understand the Lou Duran healthcare formula, it is all those diseased viral spreading masses anyway that should have taken personal responsibility for themselves and their unwashed hands and uncovered coughs. Don't come asking us healthy folks for help. Let the free market rule and make them pay for their ER visits if they don't have a regular MD, and no place to go because they don't have healthcare. No soicalism healthcare trojan horses allowed. If you didn't save for a rainy day and can't afford innoculation, and you don't have a healthcare provider, no flu shot for you! We can only owe our allegiance to the Wall Street free market entreprenuers who will save us with rapid response profiteering to design an innoculant to a pandemic. Chuck the CDC, WHO, FDA, and all the bureaucratic minions and near socialized government compensated scientists who work for them. What the hell do they know? In La Roche, Baxter, Wyeth we trust... Oh, that's right they don't make vaccine's anymore, it ain't profitable. We have to rely on Aventis Pasteur, that socialist healthcare and governement quiche eating French company to make our millions of vaccines. Happy Mayday Lou!