The Swine Flu Discovery Shows How Amazing The Modern Health System Is
Apr 26th, 2009 | 3 responses
Now that it appears that the swine flu has officially reached “crisis” proportions that requires a White House response, I started looking for background information on the virus. This Washington Post article has a good timeline.
In short, the first known victim died April 12th, Mexico identified something unusual was going on by April 16th and it was sent to Canada on Monday, with characterization within hours of it being received.
It’s absolutely mind blowing how science and technology, along with cooperative politics has allowed us to get such a quick grip on a new disease…especially picking it out from the hundreds of thousands of people that are sick at any given time. It’s too early to say how dangerous it will be, but it’s not too early to state that if it is highly dangerous, then literally millions of people’s lives were probably saved by the quick identification. Bravo to the public health apparatus, from the bench scientists, to the bureaucrats, to the doctors that recognized something was different and submitted it to authorities.
3 Responses to “The Swine Flu Discovery Shows How Amazing The Modern Health System Is”
In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the more recent emergence of H5N1 bird flu in Asia, national and local health authorities have done extensive planning for disease outbreaks that could lead to global epidemics, or pandemics. Open and frequent communication between countries and agencies has been a hallmark of that work.
Sorry Bush and Cheney for their obsession with trying to protect us. We all know that every country hates us because of Bush and Cheney. Dayum those Republicans.
Wow, and here I thought I'd made a post that in no way could be made political. I don't really want to get into it much other than to note that most public health officials are career bureaucrats, which along with career bureaucrats in the justice system, food production and intelligence systems are critical to effective governance especially as the people at the top change. It's an extremely thankless task.
mikkel, I'm also wildly impressed by the efficiency of this response. I would be very interested in understanding what triggers the Mexican health authorities spotted which persuaded them to send samples to CDC.