Call me paranoid but I'm more than a little bit worried about the way the swine flu is being handled.
~Why in the world in the Department of Homeland security taking the lead on this? It seems like it should be the CDC, not the DHS.
~Why did the DHS declare a national state of emergency when (at the time) there were only 20 confirmed cases of a virus that was reported as 'mild' in the US and hadn't caused any deaths?
~Why did the DHS release 25% of the national stockpile of anti-viral meds in light of the fact that, as mentioned, a very.very.very small group of people were sick?
~Why has the CDC already issued advice to wear masks when in public if there is an outbreak in your community. Haven't heard them do that for a long time, if ever. Again, they are giving these instructions on their website when there are an extremely few number of reported cases.
~This virus seems to have the ability to transfer from casual human to human contact - something that very few virus' can do without intentional laboratory or weaponization tinkering.
~Entire school districts are closing schools for the week, even in schools with no infected or sick students.
~Singapore airports are already using thermal imaging to screen all passengers arriving from the US for fever, and says all passengers will be screened by Wednesday.
~Tokyo airport is screening arriving passengers for fever as well.
~Countries are already banning imported pork from the US.
The website for etaiwannews.com quotes a flu patient as saying (emphasis mine)
A New Zealand student who was among those sickened said her group had stayed with Mexican families in their homes during the last few days of their trip, to better their Spanish language skills.
"Some of us were getting coughs and stuff like that a few days before the end of our trip," the student, who was not named, told New Zealand's National Radio.
She said the symptoms were not bothering her so much, but the that official reaction and being quarantined was a strange experience.
"It's a bit movie-like, it doesn't really feel real," she said.
In a nutshell there are only two theories that make sense to me.
Either the Obama administration is trying to be uber prepared and pro-active so that *if* this thing blows up big they have things ready to meet the crisis (unlike Bush & the Hurricane Katrina disaster). They are using Napolitano as their voice trying to get her some points after recent episodes of foot-in-mouth disease, and this whole thing is making a mountain out of a molehill for the purpose of political brownie points.
or.....
They know a heck of a lot more than they are telling the public. They know where this came from and what it can do. Or they know where it came from and they have no idea what it can do, an equally scarry option. They're scared ****less and this thing is going to get very, very bad before it gets better.
As for our family, we aren't going anywhere for the next 2-3 weeks. I stocked up on food today and I am just going to wait and see what happens. It seems like this thing has a 1-2 week incubation period, so my prediction is that it will either explode in the next 2-3 weeks and then grow exponentially after that, or it will fizzle out and become a non issue. I desperately hope for the second option, but I'm going to try to be at least a little bit prepared for the first.
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