Sick to Death

 

I wasn’t going to get a flu shot anyway, but had that been my disposition, I would have been far outta luck. Seniors have stood in lines for hours in front of supermarkets and drugstores trying to get a shot, prompted by the great missing vaccine scare. One elderly woman fell down, hit her head and died.

Millions will not be inoculated this year. Many will get sick who might not have if they’d gotten a shot, and probably thousands will die as a result.

The fact is that some people who wouldn’t have probably succumbed will this year, and the responsibility will lie with the Bush administration, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services and the guy in charge, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson.

It’s up to HHS to make sure that people get their shots and that there are shots to get. They failed miserably on the flu vaccines, apparently covering up prior knowledge that there would be a shortage. It’s a pattern with this administration. They claim not to have known the facts.

But this isn’t the first time they’ve fallen down monitoring the supply of vaccines. A coupla years ago, the nation ran out of snake serum. Again it was a case of a tainted production line...with no back up...and no early warning.

HHS are the same people who knew that the Medicare bill was going to be $536 billion and told Congress it would be only $398 billion. Then they spent $12 million in taxpayer funds to produce fake TV news reports that said how wonderful the new Medicare program was. These reports were then delivered to television stations around the country and several dozen of the stations actually aired them.

Premier Cheney yesterday charged that it was the threat of lawsuits, the limited efficacy of flu vaccines and limited company profits for the shortage of the medication, and then added that under a Kerry-Edwards administration the problems would simply worsen.

It’s enough to make you sick.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

Home

©2004 SetonnoteS

.