When Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) had his turn to question Sebelus, he raised the issue of whether the United States was “entitled” to the vaccine more than other nations. “Why should we be more entitled, the U.S. be more entitled to that vaccine than some other country in the world?”

Tester was reffering to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her policy that:
“What we said is once we have 40 million doses (of the vaccine), the donation can start,”

Well I'll tell you what right, we are paying for it. In fact those 40 million doses do not meet the full US demand. So if you think about it, the government will be taking the tax money of some American citizen who could use the vaccine to pay for a foreigner to get the vaccine before they do. Sebelus's position here is bad enough, Testor's is ridiculous.

thanks

dr.e

I am a bit confused about why people are worried, however. A normal flu season kills 36,000 and hospitalizes 200,000. This flu has killed 1,000 and has hospitalized 20,000. And they are saying it is already at its peak. Doesn't that mean it is less virulent than the “normal” seasonal flu? Can anyone explain this to me (nicely)?

I've seen people comparing this to the 1918 flu, which infected one out of every three persons in the world and killed at least fifty million. To date, only 5,000 people have died throughout the entire world. Each death is a tragedy, but we have to keep this in perspective. All together, there are only 414,000 laboratory confirmed cases.

This is serious, of course. But it isn't the dire impending doom it's being made out to be. It surely isn't a national crisis. H1N1 hits earlier that normal flu, but it also peaks earlier – and it tends to peak six weeks after it first hits. That means it should be peaking in the next week or two.

I view the “national emergency” stuff as PR-related hype.

Ya most likely. But I don't have a huge problem with it. Seems like a CYA statement to me. Put it out there just in case.

Obama's administration had considerably more warning about this than Bush ever did with Katrina. The government predicted 120 million H1N1 vaccines by now, we have 11 million. Even allowing for production problems their estimates were way off. Will Sibelius play the Michael Brown role?

The saving grace is that despite the deaths, which are tragic, so far the H1N1 flu isn't even as bad as many of the seasonal varieties. The great majority of people do fine.

I view the “national emergency” stuff as PR-related hype. I never was caught up in the storm of earlier sensationalism about H1N1 or any panic about getting vaccinated (or thought much of the other related stories such as requiring health-service workers to get vaccinated). I also don't view it as a government conspiracy. (Government bungling, maybe, but much of it is just indicative of the whole administration.)

That being said, I get the flu shot these days. Ever since I was pregnant I got it. Why? Well, nobody is going to argue that science is perfect, but as my doctor told me, there are far more (and worse) problems caused due to complications with the flu than problems caused due to complications with the flu shot. I like my odds with the shot better.

But government (both sides) have been slow on the uptake. I don't think that scientists in general were trying just scare everyone when they declared we would be where we are now concerning H1N1 spreading months ago. But as always, the political posturing slows things down.