This Swine Flu Plan Is Nuts
Yet another shining example of clueless government health care bureaucrats in action.
A few months ago I waxed lyrical about the British National Health Service, or NHS, which brought my friend back from the edge of eternal darkness. I myself have felt well-inclined towards the NHS for thirty-odd years, but in recent weeks I feel as if I am becoming part of a Monty Python spoof.
First, let us look at the current World Health Organization figures on swine flu, also known as H1N1. As of early August the good news is that Madagascar and Greenland are swine flu-free. The bad news is that the United Kingdom is suffering more cases than most other European countries. Why is this? There appears to be no clinical explanation for this at present, although I could tell readers stories to make their hair stand on end about hygiene in British eating establishments or the latest tales of men urinating in theater aisles during performances.
So this brings me to the government’s pandemic flu strategy. In the popular Evening Standard newspaper’s August 3 edition, there is a full two-page spread advising the public on how to deal with symptoms. We are told we must designate a “flu buddy” — oops, in England this is called a “flu friend.” We are instructed to initiate a complicated string of processes once ill. (Have you, dear reader, ever had really bad flu? Ever felt as if you will die and can barely stagger to the bathroom, only to fall over from fever, the shakes, and delirium?)
This ludicrous ad, which I calculate must have cost the NHS about $400,000, (a tabloid quarter page averages £80,000) tells flu sufferers to stay away from the doctors’ offices and call a helpline. You are then put through a series of questions about your condition, temperature, medical history, current health issues, and symptoms. You will be asked for your address and postcode. If you are not unconscious by the time this is over, you are then — wait for it — given an “authorization number.” Incidentally, the person “assessing” your qualification for a “flu authorization number” is one of two thousand folks recently picked from a motley queue of the unemployed who, from what we television-watchers could establish from the interviews given, are largely medically unqualified call center staff.
Page 1 of 2 Next ->
Carol Gould is the Philadelphia-born author of Don’t Tread on Me: Anti-Americanism Abroad, Spitfire Girls, and A Room at Camp Pickett, a play about her mother’s experiences as a WAC in World War II; she has just completed films about black GIs and GI babies. Carol has been a panelist on BBC's Any Questions?, hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, and is a commentator on Sky News, Press TV, the BBC World Service, and Five Live.
 |
 |
 |
Podcasts |  PJM Home |
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
27 Comments
1. michael:Take a look at http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/
Aug 9, 2009 - 2:29 am 2. Carol Gould:Update to my story: I saw a fleeting item about this on television on Saturday, and now the the Daily Mail reports that the NHS flu helpline is using sixteen-year-olds who work until midnight:
A quote:
“A source said last night: ‘Some of the kids are just so young I would be surprised if they could even spell the word pandemic.’”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205113/NHS-pays-16-year-olds-run-swine-flu-hotline.html#ixzz0Ng4iMLOf
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205113/NHS-pays-16-year-olds-run-swine-flu-hotline.html#ixzz0NYoc72Lt
Aug 9, 2009 - 2:48 am 3. Emma:If they were actually *hoping* to kill off half the population, this would be an excellent plan.
Your own plan is brilliant. If you ever run for anything I’ll vote for you.
Aug 9, 2009 - 3:12 am 4. eon:It must be remembered that the purpose of any bureaucracy is to preserve itself. And the primary means of doing so is usually to adopt procedures which insulate said bureaucracy from the consequences of its own bad decision-making (which is what you inevitably get from bureaucracies, which are simply committees writ large).
We here in the States are now being told (by CDC, who got it from WHO) that the “bad” news is that the H1N1 virus is contagious enough that in the end, about 1/3 of the planet’s total human population will probably contract it- but the “good” news is that for 99.999% of that number, the results will be no worse than a bad cold in the head.
Considering the incompetent way it has been handled overall so far, we can only hope that for once, our “enlightened” leaders are right about this, at least. Although considering what we have seen so far, this seems unlikely as well.
clear ether
eon
Aug 9, 2009 - 4:29 am 5. Christina V:Terrible idea. People would most certainly misuse the anti-viral (much like there have been reports of people abusing and misusing the helpline in order to stock anti-virals “just in case”), thus quickening anti-viral resistance. And by quickening anti-viral resistance, you automatically increase complications and deaths to those at high-risk…and some not especially at risk.
Aug 9, 2009 - 4:50 am 6. El Gordo:Here is what my doctor told me: you have to start taking Tamiflu or Relenza as early as possible, immediately once you feel the first symptoms. Once you are really sick – say, the next morning – they will do nothing. At that stage you need medication which works on the symptoms. So for most sick people, if you have to wait for distribution even a few hours, these “antivirals” will bring no help at all.
Am I wrong? Does anybody know more?
Aug 9, 2009 - 6:28 am 7. sodacrackers:Thank you Carol.
Aug 9, 2009 - 6:38 am 8. Fred Beloit:Though I am half-Irish[American], I have been a bit of an Anglophile ever since Brother Manning of the Irish Christian Brothers order announced in English class that poets like Keats, Byron, and Shelly (Percy yet) were athletic men who not at all resembled Ernie Kovacs’ Percy Dovetonsils character.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmEuK_UNwSs
I have read with sadness the many stories of what life and times are like in Jolly Old now. “…the latest tales of men urinating in theater aisles during performances.” I wish you all a better future when the troubles caused by your Left-wingers get sorted out, as I hope will soon happen.
Aug 9, 2009 - 6:56 am 9. Ian Thorpe:Surprisingly in view of the fact they are Conservative papers, The Evening Standard and the Daily Mail are always keen to assist the government in their campaign to suppress dissent by spreading fear and panic.
While government ministers and editors of sensationalist tabloids leap up and down shouting “This is the end of civilisation as we know it” we British are not very botherred about Swine Flu.
There is great stoicism in the british character, we are aware how fragile and fleeting life is. We are also aware politics and corporate management always have and agenda. Thus we would rather take our chances with Swine Flu than trust the government, the media or big pharma.
Aug 9, 2009 - 7:25 am 10. jerryofva:The swine flu panic is as much a product of a bureaucracy looking to expand its prestige and power as it is of real medical science. There are a lot of reasons why swine flu will not be anything like the 1919 pandemic but the one thing nobody mentions is that the most vulnerable members of the gene pool were eliminated in 1919 and few passed on their genetic heritage. Everybody on both sides of my family had the flu in 1919 and nobody died. My mother’s family had moderate to severe cases and in my father’s family it was mild to moderate in severity. I suspect that I had the flu last week and it didn’t even slow me down.
This is also true for the virus itself. The extremely virulent strains of H1N1 died with the patient leaving only the less lethal strains to propagate. This is what happens to any contagious disease. I assure you that the strain of plague endemic to the Southwest United States is nowhere near as lethal as the Black Death even without treatment. For society so firmly committed to theory of evolution we are very reluctant to actually apply its principles to the world around us.
Aug 9, 2009 - 7:35 am 11. Edmund Burke:In addition to the prescient thoughts of JerryofVA (#10) the 1919 Flu virus hit a population deprived for four years of tens of millions of bread winners, tens of millions of which were now dead and wounded, not able to feed their families, in days when there was usually only one bread winner (including alot of farmers who grew the food, and the distributions systems were all kerflunkt as well, what with diversions to the war effort). Discounting the numbers of weakened soldiers who succumbed, the others were probably not eating that well, and overworked themselves. War has always been a great breeding ground for disease and none of these dire conditions are extant in the most developed countries today.
Aug 9, 2009 - 8:38 am 12. JED:The three scariest things in modern medicine are:
Aug 9, 2009 - 9:01 am 13. lainvestorgirl:1:Experiment drug
2:Exploratory surgery
3:God-complex of mortals with checkbooks or syringes.
Jeez, and they wonder why we’re protesting bringing socialized medicine here?
Aug 9, 2009 - 9:02 am 14. Commuter:6. El Gordo:
‘Here is what my doctor told me: you have to start taking Tamiflu or Relenza as early as possible, immediately once you feel the first symptoms. Once you are really sick – say, the next morning – they will do nothing. At that stage you need medication which works on the symptoms. So for most sick people, if you have to wait for distribution even a few hours, these “antivirals” will bring no help at all.
Am I wrong? Does anybody know more?’
My understanding is that Tamiflu or Relenza antivirals are relatively useless once there are any symptoms at all. Their effect is to interfere with the ability of the virus to enter cells where they replicate. The trick with anti-virals is to use them when the extra-cellular viral count is still relatively low and buy the time for natural defenses to ramp up and handle the extra-cellular problem. If you’re very lucky, asymptomatically, but more likely just with a mild set of symptoms – feeling lousy for a day or so. There’s little or nothing drugs (or the immune system) can do about the intra-cellular end of things so once the viral replication loop gets established – intra-cellular viral replication, release, and the related spikes in extra-cellular viral count – ad gets robust enough, and that is fast, the positive effects of anti-virals are overwhelmed and they are no longer particularly effective. At that point, the idea is that the immune system fight the virus extra-cellularly until the replication loop is under control. So the effective treatment course is to buy time by treating the symptoms and promote a more positive internal environment until natural defenses have ramped up enough to do the job. Reduce fever, prevent dehydration etc. It may also include broad spectrum antibiotics, as opportunistic bacteria can start to wreak their own brand of havoc in a weakened body whose energy reserves and immune system iare focused on fighting the virus.
Aug 9, 2009 - 9:23 am 15. Commuter:13. lainvestorgirl:
‘Jeez, and they wonder why we’re protesting bringing socialized medicine here?’
Not to worry. Obama has a plan. He’s going to transfer the sickness to the 5% who don’t sneeze their fair share.
Aug 9, 2009 - 9:25 am 16. Marie Claude:hmmm, if you drink “Pastis” or “anis” decoctions, no flu !
check how many pastis drinkers never got “flu” and of any kind of flu !
Aug 9, 2009 - 12:49 pm 17. Steve Sampson:The flu kills 40,000 people every year. Most of those who succumb are in a weakened or compromised situation before contracting the flu. Scare mongering tactics will be employed to put the public in a delusional state of hysteria. This accomplishes the government’s goal of the individual placing his fate and individual liberties in the government’s hands; the last person you should rely on for help with a flu bug is a government bureaucrat.
The death toll from the pandemic of 1919 was the result of special circumstances. I was lucky enough to have spoken to my grandmother about the 1919 pandemic. She told me that the soldiers returning from the trenches were in a weakened condition; they were all thin and very hungry; the flu seemed to kill the biggest strongest men.
We have to remember these men lived in the trenches for two years: in proximity to disease and in a state of hygiene that would have killed most us. They came home in a weakened condition, their immune systems were challenged and the bigger men probably suffered more because their nutritional requirements were greater while in the trenches.
Those of us that are overweight, physically unfit, with poor dietary habits and pre-existing respiratory problems will be more vulnerable, just like any other year’s flu epidemic.
Frankly, the government has no interest in your individual health: but controlling the business of health care and the money it generates is very appealing. The government will whip up this hysteria to a frenzy until you are sure the only way you will live through the winter is to call on Obama to pay your mortgage and put fuel in your tank. Don’t be a fool for Obama’s Death Care Pimps.
Aug 9, 2009 - 2:08 pm 18. Mary Jackson:The reason why there’s so much hysteria about swine flu in the papers is that there is no real news. It’s the Silly Season.
Aug 9, 2009 - 3:17 pm 19. roGER:Apart from making a wingnut suggestion that the entire country be given an antiviral drug, Gould fails to mention that there is also an excellent plan in place to immunise every single child who attends school in Britain. That’s 8.5 million children.
Impossible you say? No, it’s been done before, although not for 45 years.
It’s an example of a generous sensible precaution which is given free to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. No wonder Gould doesn’t mention it.
Aug 9, 2009 - 3:33 pm 20. Linguist:#19. roGER: Immunizations, like anti-viral treatments, are only effective when applied before needed.
And please enlighten us as to just how Britain, who is about as financially broke as the United States and already rationing its socialized health care, intends to pay for your example of a “generous sensible precaution”? I suspect that the last time such a thing was done, the number of children was considerably less and there were a bit more funds in the country’s treasury.
Aug 9, 2009 - 10:29 pm 21. michael:Don’t virus mutate on a regular basis? So we immunise every child against pig flu’ and along comes hamster flu’ and wipes everyone out.
Aug 10, 2009 - 2:36 am 22. El Gordo:#14: Thank you, Commuter, for that fine explanation.
Aug 10, 2009 - 9:12 am 23. AdrianS:Is the swine flu pandemic a fraud?
Consider this:
What is a pandemic?
Medicine Epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population. In most countries, deaths from swine flu total only 1. That’s right 1 or less.
The medical definition and the missing element, as far as we should be concerned, is that a pandemic “affects a large population.” Swine flu DOES NOT affect nor is detrimental to a large number of people anywhere. Regular flu has kills more people than swine flu.
So why the hype? Go figure. The government is up to something. The Obama administration only classified swine flu as a “pandemic” to qualify for legislation to force swine flu immunization shots and possible quarantines and who know what. It’s a genuine abuse. It’s a boy who is crying wolf thing.
Watch out. This fall may prove to be a rather subdued flu season with people taking usual precautions against all flu viruses. Besides, could the flu shots be more deadly than the flu? It’s happened before. So, watch out.
Aug 10, 2009 - 11:51 am 24. D Jones:According to government statistics, the “normal” seasonal flu has a fatality rate of between 5 and 10 percent. To date, there have been over 6,500 “hospitalized” swine flu cases in the USA, with fewer than 450 resulting in death, a kill rate of less than 7 percent. In other words, the fatality rate is no higher or lower than that of any flu year so far. Will things get worse? Maybe…maybe not.
I agree that the Obama administration is doing their best to blow this up into a bigger deal than it is. “Never let a crisis go to waste” as Rahm Emanuel says. And it is a common fascist tactic to create a crisis where none exists, simply to get the public on your side.
Aug 10, 2009 - 7:45 pm 25. Carol Gould:For PJM readers outside the USA: I am on Sky News today (Tuesday 11 August) at 4:30PM London time talking about Hillary Clinton and –hopefully — the British National health service.
Aug 11, 2009 - 7:10 am 26. Carol:El Gordo – You are correct. Tamiflu and other meds like it are only effective if taken at the very outset of illness. If taken too late, they are not effective. So, timing is of the essence regarding these meds. And, many doctors won’t prescribe them w/o seeing the patient first because there is concern that if it’s prescribed and used in situations where it doesn’t apply (i.e., the person does not have the flu) the virus will develop resistance to is, much like we’re seeing with many antibiotics which are resulting in superbugs.
Aug 11, 2009 - 3:57 pm 27. Carol:D Jones – No one can predict if the flu will get worse or peter out since viruses mutate. There does appear to be a lot of concern that this virus could wreak havoc because it has continued to infect people even during the spring and summer months in the US, a time of year when the flu typically is not prevelant. So, it suggests that it’s a pretty resiliant bugger. It’s also got a bit of a different demographic regarding vulnerability. Normally elderly people are high on the list for vaccine, etc, but the pattern appears to strike young children disproportionately. They are theorizing that perhaps older people were exposed to a virus with some similar characteristics as this one back in the 1950’s and may have some resistance. The bad news is that the elderly on not among the top 5 high risk groups targeted as priority populations for the vaccine once it becomes available.
Aug 11, 2009 - 4:01 pm