Flu virus in this line only, inoculations line closed!

Honestly, I don’t know who I feel more disgust at, the Federal Government or the Provincial Government over the way this whole situation has been handled.  Let’s see if I can get the sequence of failures correct, if not the order.

Firstly, correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve been inoculating people in the province of Alberta for the better part of 40 years against Bubonic Plague, Polio, TB etc…, yet the powers that be managed to completely bypass all known facilities for mass inoculation by creating a whole new plan, which is patently not working well.

Secondly, we managed to allow the press to dictate the situation, creating a near panic in their ever seeking mission to create news worthy items, even when most of the news isn’t worthy of our attention.

Thirdly, we allowed other countries panic to panic our already press sensitive politicians into a panic, who thereby, facing the self-induced panic of the press, capitulate to all comers and make announcement after announcement for self-serving purposes only to actually give out so little information that the general population hasn’t a bloody clue what is fact or fiction about H1N1.

Okay, the order is backward, but it will do.

We have a system implemented in Alberta to utilize the school systems first and foremost to protect the children, yet it was completely ignored, as were walk-in clinics, seniors facilities, and the miscellaneous other health facilities, in favor of 5 clinics for Edmonton, a city of 1.1 million people, and 4 clinics for Calgary, a city of 1.2 million people, and why did they come up with this brainstorm of a distribution methodology you ask?.  Why, because the Politicians promised everyone and their dog that the immunization program would be delivered by Nov. 1st, 2009.

That’s right, for those of you who lined up last week for 6 hours on average, you suffered their stupidity, all in the name of optic’s.  Yep, they wanted to look like they knew what they were doing, and they wanted to look good doing it.

Congratulations to the Health Minister and the Ed Stelmach Government.  Instead of coming on TV and Radio and telling people the simple truth, that the logistics of distributing through the tried and true methods would take longer, and potentially mean that some people might die as a result, but the majority would be fine, you had to go and try and be hero’s.

Then, to compound this error, because our Health Minister is evidently either completely clueless or just an idiot, instead of stating “Pregnant Mothers only” on this day, or “Children under 10” on the next day, the Chief Medical officer of the province, says “The Clinics are Open… go for it, first come first serve!” The same day the President of the United States declares H1N1 a National Emergency.  Of course, us dumb Albertans don’t watch the news, nope we’re just a bunch of yokels who will saunter on into the vaccination clinic on the way to the beer store.

What exactly did you people expect to have happen in a city of 1.2 million people, 50% of which are scared #$*&less for their children?

Of course you are going to have tens of thousands show up to get inoculated.

Never mind that the press has been blasting this in the news like it was the coming of the apocalypse for the better part of 5 months.

Statistically, you stand a better chance of dying from drowning in your bath tub than from swine flu.  God forbid the press let little things like facts get in the way of mass hysteria producing stories.

We get 20,000 people showing up for the worst bloody food in the country everyday for 7 days straight at Chinook Mall Stampede breakfast… and that crap will kill you.  Even still, at least the people behind the grills manage to serve every one of them, thanks to careful planning for staffing needs… before 11am in the morning no less (no offense to the fine volunteers during Stampede).

Yet the rocket scientists we’ve elected and the super brains they’ve appointed couldn’t figure out something every bloody rancher in the province knows; don’t move all the cattle though the gate at the same time if you are intending to brand some of them. You cut out the ones you need to brand, and that way you are not wrestling with the rest.

The human condition is to line up… people live to line up.  I firmly believe that if you just stop in the middle of anywhere and look like you are waiting for something, people will line up behind you because they think their missing out on something, even when they don’t know what that something is.

Add in a pandemic with a generous dose of media induced mass hysteria, and viola, you get a Alberta made inoculation program that gets overwhelmed before they’ve even opened the doors.

Which brings me to the education component of this farce of a program.  The only decent information I saw on Television was by some young nurse who’d already had the Swine Flu, setting up a table in the middle of Malbourough Mall, with a sign saying “I’m an RN, and I’ve had the Swine Flu, ask me questions?”, which CBC broadcast during an interlude between programs.

One lady had a very legitimate question which the nurse answered very well.  The woman wanted to know what the side effects were, and how serious, because she’d heard there were problems resulting from rushing the anti-virus through testing. The young nurse calmly informed her that the side effects were minimal and mostly already known because the inoculation is a variant of the Influenza A inoculation people are all ready getting every year.

Simple, easy to understand answer.  Whether it was right or wrong, I couldn’t tell you, but at least it made sense.  I suppose that’s something.

Why wouldn’t the authorities send a formal announcement of some sort out in the form of publications to your doorstep?  20 pounds of .10 centers from every freaking politician in the country every month, and no flyers about the end of the world.  I’ll tell you why, because they didn’t want to look like they were prepared to deal with fatalities.  Governments are so concerned with appearance, that the greater good ends up taking second place to polling results. It’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s the way it works in this age of mass communications.

For me, just like about 30% of the population, it was a couple of days on the crapper, and a lot of sleep, with a minor fever.  Others display much worst symptoms, but most just skate on through.

The bad news for most of you is, if you haven’t already had a shot, you might as well not bother, because it takes 10 to 14 days for your body to start to develop immunity, and we are already well into the swine flu season… most of the people you are around have probably already had it, have it, or got a shot, so your screwed.  Although the best resistance is the one you create from having gone through it already.

If the Government really wanted to prevent this from becoming an outbreak, inoculations should have begun in August.

All levels are responsible… not for not trying, but for denying the obvious to themselves and the public.

The drug couldn’t be made fast enough for this season, and the logistics of inoculating 20 to 25 million of 33 million people is a herculean task at best, and an effort in futility in the way they approached it altogether.

In not just stating this, and dealing with the problem from a logical, systemic position, they failed in their trust, and that’s the sad part.  Thousands of people lining up for something they probably don’t really need, and the ones who really need it being forced to line up, and the easiest lot to inoculate, the children, being forced into the line-ups as well.

How much do you want to bet that the people at Glaxo informed the Health Ministries of this little fact months ago… for that matter, are you telling that me our respective Health Authorities don’t’ already know the production capacity of our pharmaceuticals?  If they don’t, then we really are screwed.

This weeks “Stupid Monkey” award goes to all levels of Government, for not coming out and telling the people the truth of the situation, letting the press dictate their agenda, and then completely failing to live up to their own commitment, which was doomed to failure anyway, because Glaxo-Smith Kline couldn’t be relied upon to deliver enough doses before the season started anyway.

A special “Stupid Monkey” award goes out to various members of the Liberal Party, for inflaming an already bad situation with more stupid comments.

Now, kindly pass that poor sucker over there a body bag,… I mean an alcohol swab… yeah, that’s what I meant.

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Tags: h1n1 vaccines, ministry of health, swine flu

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 pm and is filed under health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.