Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Registration is currently closed. That means if you're not already registered, you can't comment. We will let you know if and when registration re-opens. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Interesting that Obama’s children have not gotten and from what I understand, are not going to get the vaccine.
EMERGENCY!!!!
bridgetown on October 25, 2009 at 11:26 AM
This swine flu emergency is a total joke – and an abuse of power by the White House, which should be grilled in Congress over it (as if that would happen with the lunatic useful idiots controlling Capitol Hill).
What relly surprises me is that NO ONE is talking about the problems producing the vaccine and the shortage when IT WAS ALL SHRILLARY’S DOING!! From a WSJ article back in 2003:
Hillary’s Vaccine Shortage
Everyone knows America’s vaccine industry is in serious trouble, with an ever dwindling number of producers and recent severe vaccine shortages. What everyone also should know is that the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine has now pinned much of the blame on Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Well, not in so many words. The panel of doctors and economists issuing a report on vaccines last week was too polite to mention the former First Lady by name. But they identify as a fundamental cause of the problem the fact that the government purchases 55% of the childhood vaccine market at forced discount prices. The result has been “declining financial incentives to develop and produce vaccines.”
The root of this government role goes back to August 1993, when Congress passed Mrs. Clinton’s Vaccines for Children program. A dream of Hillary’s friends at the Children’s Defense Fund, her vaccines plan was to use federal power to ensure universal immunization. So the government agreed to purchase a third of the national vaccine supply (the Clintons had pushed for 100%) at a forced discount of half price, then distribute it to doctors to deliver to the poor and the un- and under-insured.
The result is a cautionary tale for anyone who favors national health care. Already very high in 1993, childhood vaccination rates barely budged. A General Accounting Office report at the time noted that “vaccines are already free” for the truly needy through programs like Medicaid. Meanwhile, however, the Hillary project dealt the vaccine industry another financial body blow.
Thirty years ago, the Institute report notes, 25 companies produced vaccines for the U.S. market. Today only five remain, and a number of critical shots have only one producer. Recent years have brought shortages of numerous vaccines, including those for whooping cough, diphtheria and chicken pox.
progressoverpeace on October 25, 2009 at 11:26 AM
Well, obviously these terrible, terrible production problems are the result of The Obama Administration failing to adequately supervise the production of those influenza vaccines.
If The Obama Administration, who knew long ago that this would be a terrible, tragic pandemic, had taken proper steps to nationalize the production of these vaccines, this catastrophic loss of human life would not have occurred.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Registration is currently closed. That means if you're not already registered, you can't comment. We will let you know if and when registration re-opens. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
This “swine flu emergency” reminds me of Y2K.
behiker on October 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM
Interesting that Obama’s children have not gotten and from what I understand, are not going to get the vaccine.
EMERGENCY!!!!
bridgetown on October 25, 2009 at 11:26 AM
This swine flu emergency is a total joke – and an abuse of power by the White House, which should be grilled in Congress over it (as if that would happen with the lunatic useful idiots controlling Capitol Hill).
What relly surprises me is that NO ONE is talking about the problems producing the vaccine and the shortage when IT WAS ALL SHRILLARY’S DOING!! From a WSJ article back in 2003:
progressoverpeace on October 25, 2009 at 11:26 AM
Well, obviously these terrible, terrible production problems are the result of The Obama Administration failing to adequately supervise the production of those influenza vaccines.
If The Obama Administration, who knew long ago that this would be a terrible, tragic pandemic, had taken proper steps to nationalize the production of these vaccines, this catastrophic loss of human life would not have occurred.
/emphasis added
Skandia Recluse on October 25, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Good for thee but not for me.
eyesky on October 25, 2009 at 12:09 PM