Changing The Subject, Day Two

by DemFromCT

I'm a big fan of pandemic flu preparedness, and I appreciate anything that helps to repair the woeful state of the public health system. Today, Bush travels to the NIH and pretends Intelligent Design doesn't exist and that he doesn't support teaching it in the schools:

Vaccine improvement is expected to take center stage in the Bush administration's preparations for a worldwide flu outbreak, with a potential travel ban and restrictions on global commerce part of the contingency planning.

President Bush on Tuesday will announce his strategy on how to prepare for the next flu pandemic -- preparations expected to cost at least $6.5 billion -- whether it is caused by the worrisome Asian bird flu or some other super-strain of influenza.
A key element: States and cities will get their first specific instructions from federal health officials on such things as who should get limited doses of vaccines and the antiviral medications Tamiflu or Relenza.

Topping that list are workers involved in manufacturing flu vaccine, health workers caring for the ill, and other first responders such as police and ambulance drivers, said a public health specialist shown a recent version of the plan.

More details are to be released a day after Bush's speech at the National Institutes of Health. The president first will stress that it will take more than the federal government to battle a super-flu.

"It's akin to the Rosie-the-riveter type thing, because we are asking every American and every American institution to do quite a bit," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

"America has this tough-it-out strategy when you get sick. You aren't helping yourself or the country going to work when you get ill. You are potentially threatening a greater health issue if you send children to school when they are sick," Duffy said.

Of course, we'll need to wait a few more hours to see what Bush says, and to see what the final long-awaited, long-delayed CDC plan looks like. There's little question Bush plans to use the photo op at NIH to enhance his image and change the subject from the Libby indictments. But that won't last long... there are too many outstanding questions, and Libby's arraignment Thursday will turn the cameras back where thet belong.

Alito for a day, and NIH visits for another day won't accomplish much in terms of either goal... preparing for pandemic flu, and changing the subject away from the indictment and the WH run-up to the war. Both SCOTUS and panflu are important topics, but neither will distract from the needed scrutiny of WH actions (as opposed to words). And Cheney remains under the microscope as we move forward.

Bush would like to turn the page, but the American people will not let that happen. A failed President doesn't get to set the agenda the way he'd like. So as we await the SCOTUS hearings, and realize that pro-choice Republicans are having their own moment of truth, let's see what Bush has to say about avian flu, and then get back to making this WH answer the questions swirling around Libby's indictment.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

the flu plan appears to have three elements:

1. surveillance and early detection - so far so good
2. stockpiling of meds and vaccine, with money for a 'crash program' of cell culture techniques and novel (i.e. DNA) vaccine production -also good, but windfall profits to manufacturers give me pause
3. working with state and local authorities -- not everyone likes and trusts the CDC, this will be interesting.

The full plan still needs to be released and studied.

[DemFromCT]

news story is here.

[Mimikatz]

The press conference wsa most remarkable in aht it left out. Who gets the stockpiled vaccines and drugs? First responders first, but then "at-risk" populations. Does this mean old people or children--a legitimate debate. It seems to me that vaccinating children and health care workers and all workers in confined facilities is prefereable to vaccinating all the occupants of a nursing home, for example, even though my mother is one of those.

He also did not say HOW we would confine the virus first in foreign countries and then in localities where it surfaces.

Bush was able to talk about the virus becoming different in a way that would facilitate human-to-human transmission without saying "mutating" or "evolving." On the other hand, he did talk anout "cell culture" techinques of vaccine development, and I wonder if anyone thought that meant stem cells.

Time for a push to revitalize both pub;ic health and science education. I only heard the former.

And the flu-wiki has competion now from flupandemic.gov.

[DemFromCT]

flupandemic.gov would be a welcome addition. Flu wiki still deals with local issues that the feds are not doing.

[YK]

Apart from the health concerns, there are also the economic effects of a flu pandemic. Businesses would suffer from travel bans and trade interruptions. Poor people would be hit especially hard; they can't always afford to stay home from their jobs, if they or their children get sick. If they're just barely making it financially, an event like this could knock them down completely.

Everything really does come back to the economy. If there is a flu pandemic, it will show us how well the economy is doing for the average American.