Swine flu may infect half the U.S. population this year, hospitalize 1.8 million patients and lead to as many as 90,000 deaths, more than twice the number killed in a typical seasonal flu, White House advisers said.
In a report by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, President Barack Obama today was urged to speed vaccine production and name a senior member of the White House staff, preferably the homeland security adviser, to take responsibility for decision-making on the pandemic. Initial doses should be accelerated to mid-September to vaccinate as many as 40 million people, the advisory group said.
Seasonal flu usually kills about 36,000 Americans, said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Swine flu, also called H1N1, causes more severe illness needing hospitalization among younger people than seasonal flu, while leaving people 65 and older relatively unscathed, said Mike Shaw of the CDC.
“This isn’t the flu that we’re used to,” said Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. “The 2009 H1N1 virus will cause a more serious threat this fall. We won’t know until we’re in the middle of the flu season how serious the threat is, but because it’s a new strain, it’s likely to infect more people than usual.” . . .
“We are making every preparation effort assuming a safe and effective vaccine will be available in mid-October,” Sebelius said today at the CDC’s Atlanta offices.
According to what the advisory report describes as a “plausible scenario,” 30 percent to 50 percent of the country’s population will be infected in the fall and winter. As many as 300,000 patients may be treated in hospital intensive care units, filling 50 percent to 100 percent of the available beds, and 30,000 to 90,000 people may die, the report said.
Do you expect it to be that bad? It sounds like we’ll have a vaccine fairly soon, which should mitigate these worst case scenarios. Why scare people like this?
It has been said that governments often instill fear in their populations as a way to seize more power. Oh, the terrorists are going to kill us all. We’d better let the government take us to war. Oh, the economy is collapsing and we’re going to have the Great Depression all over again. We’d better let the government take over the economy. Oh, the plague is coming. We’d better let the government take over health care.
Of course, there ARE legitimate dangers that we have to deal with. How can we tell the difference between those and political fears? It seems that panic, in general, is a bad thing when facing any danger. FDR, though we might question his ideology, was a good leader and in facing the actual depression he first calmed the country down, saying that people should NOT fear. Shouldn’t we be automatically suspicious when our leaders–of any party– try to scare us to death?
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