SYNDICATED COLUMN: Dithering While America Sneezes
Failure on H1N1 Highlights a Bigger Crisis
America's scandalous lame (non-)response to the swine flu pandemic isn't a big deal. Not compared to, say, the melting of the polar ice cap. It isn't torture. Or war. It pales next to giving hundreds of billions of dollars to wealthy bankers and nothing to homeowners facing foreclosure. But it sure is interesting.
First the Obama Administration committed the classic mistake of governance: they overpromised and underdelivered, failing to ensure Americans had enough H1N1 vaccine. Summertime estimates of 120 million doses fell to 40 million and then 28 million. In fairness to Obama Administration officials, vaccine production is an inherently unpredictable business; the swine flu antigen simply grew slower than that of other flus.
But here's what's weird: Even after the feds learned there wouldn't be enough vaccine to go around, they urged everyone to demand it from their doctors. Lines reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the 1970s sprang up outside clinics.
At many locations, hundreds of people were turned away. Hint to Secretary Sebelius: they won't go back.
More telling were the White House's inability to see the crisis coming coupled with its knee-jerk reliance on free markets. With the air out of the capitalist balloon since September 2008, why on earth would Obama & Co. trust private pharmaceutical corporations to do the job? A pandemic calls for a sweeping response such as temporary or permanent nationalization of drug companies.
Moreover, the decision to outsource most of the production overseas baffles the mind. Four out of five of the vaccine makers hired by the U.S. government were in other countries. CSL Ltd., one of the four and based in Australia, met its own country's needs first.
Now there's an idea.
Also indicative of America's "can't do" spirit in the Age of Obama is the government's unwillingness to impose common sense on the cheapest of the cheap: employers.
A hundred years after the rise of unionism, nearly 40 percent of private-sector workers get no paid sick days. Add that to employees at other firms who have already used up their meager allotment, and those who are afraid to take a day off lest they get targeted for layoffs, and you've got trouble: tens of millions of people mixing it up at work, many of them carrying a highly contagious, potentially lethal virus.
Nina G. Stillman, a lawyer with a New York law firm that advises companies on sick-leave policy, told The New York Times: "Employers who do not offer sick days are not prepared to offer them now, and they recognize that this may result in not achieving what they say they would like, which is that people who are sick stay home."
Translation: employers don't give a damn about health of the country. Well, maybe a damn. Not a nickel.
One of the nation's largest employers, actually threatens to fire workers who get sick. Reports the Times: "At Wal-Mart, when employees miss one or more days because of illness or other reasons, they generally get a demerit point. Once employees obtain four points over a six-month period, they begin receiving warnings that can lead to dismissal."
Note to firing squads of the future: see above paragraph.
A country with a strong, well-run government would order employers to give all employees with flu-like symptoms paid time off from work. But Barack Obama, in thrall to and in the pockets of big business, hasn't lifted a finger to spare us from misery—and deaths—that are totally unnecessary.
One of the most reliable indicators of a country's political and social viability is its ability to respond to an emergency. Are leaders able to react quickly and forcefully, like JFK during the Cuban missile crisis? Or do they get caught flat-footed? Is the government dysfunctional, with each branch waiting for some other agency to act?
The United States has faced four major challenges in this new century: the stolen election of 2000, 9/11, Katrina, and the Depression that began a little over one year ago. Each crisis metastasized within a different medium (politics, military, domestic governance, economy), each essential to maintaining a successful nation-state. Tellingly, the U.S. failed each test.
Will the H1N1 pandemic rises to those events' status as signal catastrophes? I don't know. But it highlights what many of us have suspected for years: the U.S. has entered an irreversible decline.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the upcoming graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is also the author of the 2002 graphic travelogue "To Afghanistan and Back.")
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
America's scandalous lame (non-)response to the swine flu pandemic isn't a big deal. Not compared to, say, the melting of the polar ice cap. It isn't torture. Or war. It pales next to giving hundreds of billions of dollars to wealthy bankers and nothing to homeowners facing foreclosure. But it sure is interesting.
First the Obama Administration committed the classic mistake of governance: they overpromised and underdelivered, failing to ensure Americans had enough H1N1 vaccine. Summertime estimates of 120 million doses fell to 40 million and then 28 million. In fairness to Obama Administration officials, vaccine production is an inherently unpredictable business; the swine flu antigen simply grew slower than that of other flus.
But here's what's weird: Even after the feds learned there wouldn't be enough vaccine to go around, they urged everyone to demand it from their doctors. Lines reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the 1970s sprang up outside clinics.
At many locations, hundreds of people were turned away. Hint to Secretary Sebelius: they won't go back.
More telling were the White House's inability to see the crisis coming coupled with its knee-jerk reliance on free markets. With the air out of the capitalist balloon since September 2008, why on earth would Obama & Co. trust private pharmaceutical corporations to do the job? A pandemic calls for a sweeping response such as temporary or permanent nationalization of drug companies.
Moreover, the decision to outsource most of the production overseas baffles the mind. Four out of five of the vaccine makers hired by the U.S. government were in other countries. CSL Ltd., one of the four and based in Australia, met its own country's needs first.
Now there's an idea.
Also indicative of America's "can't do" spirit in the Age of Obama is the government's unwillingness to impose common sense on the cheapest of the cheap: employers.
A hundred years after the rise of unionism, nearly 40 percent of private-sector workers get no paid sick days. Add that to employees at other firms who have already used up their meager allotment, and those who are afraid to take a day off lest they get targeted for layoffs, and you've got trouble: tens of millions of people mixing it up at work, many of them carrying a highly contagious, potentially lethal virus.
Nina G. Stillman, a lawyer with a New York law firm that advises companies on sick-leave policy, told The New York Times: "Employers who do not offer sick days are not prepared to offer them now, and they recognize that this may result in not achieving what they say they would like, which is that people who are sick stay home."
Translation: employers don't give a damn about health of the country. Well, maybe a damn. Not a nickel.
One of the nation's largest employers, actually threatens to fire workers who get sick. Reports the Times: "At Wal-Mart, when employees miss one or more days because of illness or other reasons, they generally get a demerit point. Once employees obtain four points over a six-month period, they begin receiving warnings that can lead to dismissal."
Note to firing squads of the future: see above paragraph.
A country with a strong, well-run government would order employers to give all employees with flu-like symptoms paid time off from work. But Barack Obama, in thrall to and in the pockets of big business, hasn't lifted a finger to spare us from misery—and deaths—that are totally unnecessary.
One of the most reliable indicators of a country's political and social viability is its ability to respond to an emergency. Are leaders able to react quickly and forcefully, like JFK during the Cuban missile crisis? Or do they get caught flat-footed? Is the government dysfunctional, with each branch waiting for some other agency to act?
The United States has faced four major challenges in this new century: the stolen election of 2000, 9/11, Katrina, and the Depression that began a little over one year ago. Each crisis metastasized within a different medium (politics, military, domestic governance, economy), each essential to maintaining a successful nation-state. Tellingly, the U.S. failed each test.
Will the H1N1 pandemic rises to those events' status as signal catastrophes? I don't know. But it highlights what many of us have suspected for years: the U.S. has entered an irreversible decline.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the upcoming graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is also the author of the 2002 graphic travelogue "To Afghanistan and Back.")
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
posted by Ted Rall at
4:46 PM
10 Comments:
I AM SO GLAD YOU RELEASED THIS ASAP.
Seriously, I am going to direct people to this. Via your columns link.
Yay Ted!
Did you know the CDC ordered states to stop testing for H1N1 in July? If you go to the hospital with the flu, they rarely test for H1N1, they normally test you for Influenza strain A.
I know all about this- I haven't called in sick for work in more than three years. I've seen a lot of good workers fired for that, while those management likes better get away with far worse.
Workplaces have always been that way, but it's never been more blatant.
The U.S. failed each one.
Thank you Ted. About time someone stated the obvious. This country is falling apart worse than a dysfunctional family in a torn down springer.
The deliberate destruction of the states is duh planned.
Who why how whatever.
per today's Democracy Now! ...
calls are growing for an investigation into why health officials have handed out swine flu vaccines to some of Wall Street’s leading financial firms while they’re unavailable to most Americans. More than a dozen companies were given the vaccines, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. The Center for Disease Control says the companies met several criteria, including having a large number of employees and their own medical staff. But critics say the CDC has violated its own calls to distribute the vaccine only to those at highest risk. In a statement, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said, “Although CREW has been unable to uncover the demographic makeup of [these companies], it seems safe to assume the vast majority of their employees are not pregnant women, infants and children, young adults up to 24 years old, and healthcare workers.”
My wife is a nurse. She said the vaccine is a live virus because there is such a shortage. And you statists trust these people to run your health care?
And you statists trust these people to run your health care?
You're a moron fisting a straw-man. I don't know who you're talking to, because no one is advocating this position.
The discussion is about the government running health insurance. I want DOCTORS running my health care, and I want them to do it without insurance companies telling them how.
But, by all means, keep on arguing with those imaginary "statists" that you're so frightened of...
@anonymous - Wall St bankers are high risk. Think about all of the filth that rats encounter on a daily basis.
@Billy Jack - Accurate H1N1 testing requires specific patient symptoms. Many were taking the approach: (1) You have it so they treat it. or (2) You do not have it but whatever virus you have increases your chances of catching it. So they treat you to prevent it. They do not test you because either way you are being treated for it.
Ted:
You realize that the executive doesn't have the authority to: "order employers to give all employees with flu-like symptoms paid time off from work" congress might be able to pull it off eventually, but that isn't going to happen any time soon.
@Billy Jack
The vaccine mist is live-attenuated virus, the shot is dead virus.
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