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.
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Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq

News of the Swine-Flu started drifting into the media back in April of 2009. It very soon began to seem like it was much noise about not much. Then it returned to the airwaves and started hitting all of us hard in early October as the date for the federal roll-out of a newly developed vaccine approached. One would imagine that the Ministry of Health would follow their own directives, as listed on their “About Mission, Values, Activities” page. Pay particular attention to the third sub-heading under “Core Values – Our Values in Action,” which is entitled, “Caring for the People of Canada.” (take a minute to click the link and read that one section). There’s talk about advancing the public good, as well as the provision of credible information and reliable advice – presumably to that same public. But what has actually happened falls rather short of the Ministry’s espoused ideals.

The Federal government, as represented by Canadian Health Minister, Leona Aglukkaq, told Canadians on October 21st, “I’m happy to say that today Health Canada has authorized the H1N1 flu virus vaccine,” and on October 25th, “I encourage Canadians to get the vaccine to stop the pandemic”. I live in BC where the H1N1 virus hit hardest, the clock is still ticking, people are still dying, it’s October 30th, and my family is still unable to get the vaccine. Unfortunately, or fortunately (I won’t know until the grim reaper has completed his grisly harvest), we’re not in a high risk category, so if we die, well, that’s just taking one for the team, don’t you see.
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