An Epidemic of Prevarication
Via Rush, the White House is evidently trying to use doomsday-we’re-all-gonna-die-head-for-the-hills-lock-up-the-women-and-children tactics to sell socialized medicine.
But it’s not working:
On Monday the White House released a report from a group of presidential advisers that included a scenario in which as much as half the population could catch the H1N1 virus, and death possibilities ranged from 30,000 to 90,000.
“We don’t think that’s the most likely scenario,” CDC flu specialist Anne Schuchat said of the presidential advisers’ high-end tally.
…
“Everything we’ve seen in the U.S. and everything we’ve seen around the world suggests we won’t see that kind of number if the virus doesn’t change,” Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a C-SPAN interview taped Wednesday.
…
The H1N1 virus so far has been no more deadly than the flu strains seen every fall and winter. And close genetic tracking of the new virus as it circled the globe in the past five months has shown no sign that it is mutating to become more virulent.
Am I the only one hearing Don Adams as Maxwell Smart saying “Would you believe… four deaths and a couple of swollen glands?”
Also according to the CDC, 36,000 people die from the flu every year. So even 30 thou from the swine flu would be a light year.
I’m still going to wash my hands like Howard Hughes, don’t get me wrong—and I’ve had a flu that felt as close to death as I’d care to come—but if it’s okay with this administration, I’ll decline to panic.