See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Vomit No Evil
(Be Afraid • Medical)
Following orders from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, most states including mine (Texas), along with most counties including mine (Fort Bend), have stopped publicly reporting details such as the number of residents who’ve caught or died from swine flu during a given week or month.
The decision to obfuscate reporting of the disease’s progression comes as health officials reveal that, despite the presence of a wildly communicable disease that could prove wildly fatal in coming months, the immediate availability of swine flue vaccine is expected in such small amounts that only those with a strong winky-wink relationship with their physician or a high-ranking government medical official can expect to get any.
As a practicing cynic, and long-time observer of the CDC, my theory is that the government strategy is to reduce any psychological stress the general public may be feeling, by removing thoughts of this pandemic flu from the public consciousness, as much as possible.
Out of sight, out of mind. Out of mind, less chance 25,000 citizens will rush a medical clinic known to be hoarding 2,000 doses of precious H1N1 flu vaccine.
But for those who aren’t satisfied with taking a government-supplied sugar-coated placebo each week, here are a few facts:
→ Even under the CDC’s new reporting scheme, the quasi-government agency admits that, for the three weeks from Aug. 30 through Sept. 19, more than 10,000 Americans were hospitalized after contracting swine flu, and 936 of them died.
→ In Texas, 907 people tested positive for some sort of “Type A” flu during that same three-week period, most likely swine flu.
→ Our government, in its infinite wisdom, isn’t telling us how many adults died of swine flue in the state of Texas during this period. However, it has chosen to tell us that three children died. One of them, a 25-day-old resident of a region that includes both Fort Bend County and Houston, was among the dead, but also suffered from “a significant underlying medical condition.”
→ We also have been provided with minimal details about a swine flu “outbreak” at an unnamed university in Kleberg County, Texas, during the period, and have bare-bones indications from the government that additional swine flu episodes have occurred during the past three weeks in Texas “summer camps, schools and congregate facilities.”
I don’t know about you, but given the apparent fact that only pregnant women and good friends of medical doctors will receive swine flu vaccines in anything approximating a timely manner for this swine flu season (which actually never ended since last winter), I am not appeased by the CDC decision to make it very difficult to obtain hard information about swine flu outbreaks, hospitalizations and deaths.
I mean for God sakes, if you as a government aren’t going to provide us with any chance at immunization against this potentially fatal disease, the least you can do is tell us what hot spots to avoid, and be realistic about whether we’re all going to die, or not, if we go shopping at the ‘X’ Mall in Houston.
Is there something really, really obvious I’m just not seeing here? Some big-picture knowledge of which my brain just is not capable of comprehending?
Or is our government, in the person of some faux government entity, merely punking us in an effort to get us to sit down, shut up and catch the swine flu in peace before passing it on and hopefully not vomiting to death in the process?
→ B.Dunn, Sep 26, 2009, 07 44 pm
