Swine flu: Are we prepared for the worst?

Only 16.5 million doses of the swine flu vaccine have been produced in spite of a promise by The White House that 80 million to 120 million doses would be ready by mid-October.

So it’s finally official, said Tevi Troy in National Review Online. Just as the death toll from the H1N1 swine flu virus passed the 1,000 mark last week, President Obama declared the pandemic a full-blown “national emergency.” The announcement was not intended to alarm anyone, the White House rushed to assure us. A presidential declaration of national emergency is a formality that allows hospitals to set up makeshift triage facilities “to handle a potential surge of sick patients.” What should alarm us, though, is the shortage of swine flu vaccine. Back in July, the White House promised that 80 million to 120 million doses of vaccine would be ready by mid-October. Only 16.5 million doses have been produced. The good news is that, so far at least, the virus seems no more deadly than a typical seasonal flu virus. But among its victims already is the government’s credibility.

This is shaping up as Obama’s Hurricane Katrina, said Rick Moran in TheAmericanThinker.com. Just as George W. Bush was embarrassed by his lackadaisical handling of the disaster in New Orleans, President Obama should be tarnished by his failure to prepare us for the swine flu pandemic. You would think that, given the fanfare with which the administration unveiled its supposedly “aggressive” swine flu strategy in July, “little details like having enough vaccine for everyone who wanted it would have been taken care of.” Not only are we short of vaccine, said Michael Balboni in Newsday, the distribution of what we do have has been chaotic. Here in New York, the doses have been doled out seemingly at random among vaccination centers and individual doctors, with no clear record of what’s gone where. “If our government can’t adequately respond to a problem it saw coming six months ago, what will it do if we get surprised?”

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