Swine flu declared national emergency?

Summary



In a story on cbn.com , it tells of how President Obama has declared the H1N1 flu to be a national emergency. The article says that in doing so, President Obama has greatly increased Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' power to bypass federal laws in establishing offsite clinics. The government now hopes for fifty million doses of the H1N1 flu vaccinations by mid-November and one hundred fifty million doses by December. Though the numbers are not exact, because hospitals have been treating most cases involving flu symptoms as the swine flu and not testing the strand, It is estimated that there has been twenty thousand hospitalized, and one thousand deaths due to the H1N1 flu strand. The purpose of the move by President Obama is suppose to try and speed up the process of treatment and vaccinations, and to reduce the chance of spreading to uninfected patients in onsite healthcare facilities.



Response



While I donot like to hear of any number of deaths due to illness, I have to say that the swine flu has not in any way, shape, or form reached a level that should warrant being a national emergency. In the article, it stated that there has been twenty thousand hospitalized and one thousand deaths due to the swine flu. On the site flufacts.com , it reports that between forty and fifty MILLION cases of the regular flu are reported each year, leading to one hundred and fifty thousand people being hospitalized every single year, and between thirty and forty thousand deaths every year. All I hear now days is swine flu this and H1N1 that, and did you hear that so and so got the swine flu. This whole thing is just some politically charged media driven load of you know what, and yet it has lead to the most aggressive vaccination campaign in history. I just have to say that it is my opinion, that President Obama is a very deceptive trickster. He is dodging the issues concerning Afgahnastan, and by slight of hand he is diverting attention state side with a phoney 'National Emergency'. If anything warrants a state of panic, based on the cold hard facts and statistics, it should be the regular flu, but nobody ever really even gives the flu a second thought. It is amazing to me, how dispite a lack of evidence, and with true facts to the contrary readily available, a whole nation of people can be pushed into a state of paranoia and fear, by a presidentially endorsed media spin on things.