H1N1 vaccine farce good example of government health care

December 15, 2009


If you save back issues of the News-Topic, please go back and reread the article at the top of page 7A from Sunday, Dec. 13 (“Gripes about swine flu vaccine abound”). If you need further proof that any kind of large-scale healthcare system managed by the federal government would be a disaster waiting to happen, then I’m sure you haven’t been paying attention during the debate this year.

Swine flu. One disease, one time. Still, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta has pretty well screwed up everything. The handling of the H1N1 “crisis” is proof positive that conservatives and libertarians are right when they point out that, regarding most problems, “the government” rarely knows what it’s doing.

A later story stated that a large quantity of the H1N1 vaccine was being “recalled.” Too bad, I guess, if you got a shot from one of the defective batches. Never mind that “good” batches of the vaccine were sent in the same quantities to both small communities and heavily populated areas, guaranteeing an uneven application among groups that needed it most. Never mind that the vaccine reached the most susceptible people long after the “pandemic” had peaked.

I read elsewhere that 10,000 people have died in America due to the H1N1 virus. Out of curiosity, a Google search revealed that during the 1990s, an average of 36,000 Americans a year died from “regular influenza.” A more prudent course of action for the government might have been simply to stock up on medicines to actually treat the people who got sick from H1N1. Or better yet, to stay out of the way and let private enterprise deal with it.

We’ve got to learn that more government is just not the answer to our problems as a nation. That’s why the Founders wrote the Constitution in such a way as to list all those things the government could NOT do.

If you still want government-operated healthcare, please consider moving to England or Canada, OK? Maybe you can get the government to subsidize your U-Haul.