Obama on swine flu: Don't call us, we'll call you

In his speech at the National Academy of Sciences this morning, Obama talked about what the G is doing so far for the outbreak of swine flu that's killing people in Mexico. So far that includes telling people not to panic, telling people to wash their hands, and breaking into the "federal stockpile" of flu vaccines (the conspiracy theorist in me thinks, what else do they have in that stockpile?) to send to affected states.

And now, in the possibly inappropriate words of Michael from "10 Things I Hate About You," "the shit hath hitteth the fan."

The WHO has rated the outbreak at Phase 3, which is right at the end of "few human infections." The EU's Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has warned Europeans against traveling to the US and Mexico, and the acting head of the CDC, Dr. Richard Besser says it's not as bad as all that. In a disconcerting turn of events, we're the ones that people are staying away from. While swine flu hasn't killed anyone in the States yet, possibly due to better standards of medical care, and possibly due to a lesser severity of the strain, there is a potential for it to get worse.

Of course, before we panic, let's remember that 63,000 died in 2005 of the flu- in America alone. And whatever happened with that avian flu "epidemic?" Only 257 people have died since it was discovered. The West Nile virus? Ok, that one's a little worse, at 1131 deaths, but that's the amount of deaths in the past 10 years. So it's good to put things into perspective before donning the haz-mat garb.

Another requisite consequence of this outbreak is the finger-pointing. The Dems are gleefully pointing out that Republicans lopped off millions of dollars from the stimulus package that would be allotted to "pandemic preparation." And while we're blaming the GOP for the downturn in the market due to investors' fear of a worldwide epidemic, let's blame them for that volcano eruption that happened after they cut out funding for "volcano monitoring." After all, that's what happens when you cut funding for something- it inevitably comes back to bite you. (That must be the entire reasoning behind Obama's stimulus package.)

On another note, I am a little curious as to why the DHS is getting so involved in the situation. While it's nice to see Janet Napolitano dealing with something actually inside US borders, shouldn't she be out violating someone's fourth amendment rights?

Update: I was meeting with a vendor today at work who plugged antibacterial spray with commenting about swine flu. Ha.