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Swine Flu is not Obama’s Katrina

by | 3:10 am, October 29, 2009 | 1 Comment

I’ve heard some Republican radio personalities wonder aloud whether the H1N1 pandemic is going to be Barack Obama’s Hurricane Katrina.  I’d argue it shouldn’t be – which is not to say it won’t be.

The late and undersized deliveries of the “swine flu” vaccine were not caused by government, but by problems at certain vaccine manufacturers (problems which were fixed fairly quickly but which nevertheless threw off the anticipated vaccine schedule.)

And while this may be a shocking concept not just to liberals but even to many independents and conservatives (and not so shocking to libertarians), I have to wonder why people are so utterly, slavishly, unthinkingly reliant on government to deal with this problem.

Is there really a reason that we needed or need government intervention to get efficient and effective production and distribution of the vaccine?  Yes, people will argue that “public health” is the concern of the government.

I think the case for that is borderline, and the case for a somewhat worse than normal strain of a flu virus being the responsibility of the federal government is not easy to make.

Rather than blame the federal government, people should reconsider reliance on the private sector, which has ways of getting hammers and toilet seats to customers for single- or double-digit numbers of dollars rather than three- or four-digit numbers for which government is known.

More than the federal government’s fault for getting the vaccine to people in the time and quantities demanded, it’s the peoples’ fault for relying on the government.

That said, I do believe that if the pandemic worsens and there remain substantial problems in vaccine delivery, people will blame Obama in the same way they blamed Bush for a hurricane. (To be fair, there are some real arguments to be made about the Bush Administration failing to do what they needed to, and about much of the New Orleans damage actually being caused by the government’s shoddy construction and planning of levees.)  In other words, Obama has far less to answer for in this situation than Bush did during Katrina.  But politics ain’t beanbag and Obama will be taken to task if things don’t improve soon.

Unfortunately, the result of would-be conservatives attacking Obama over this issue will be to imply that conservatives have found another area in which they believe the federal government should do more rather than less.  And it’s that kind of political miscalculation that deservedly cost the GOP so dearly in the past two election cycles.  Like it or not, Mr. Politician, at some point principles do matter.

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

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Category: Health Reform, Politics, Syndicated
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Comments

  1.   Sean Rushforth
      October 29th, 2009 @ 8:35 am

    The department of health have launch a campaign to encourage NHS staff to have the new swine flu vaccine as concerns over its safety still linger Swine Flu UK

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