Needle Point
Obama has declared the Swine Flu epidemic in the US a national emergency. Swine Flu has been a public health emergency since April of this year, but making it a national emergency provides people like Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius quite sweeping powers to bypass most federal rules. I am a little curious as to why this is now deemed necessary. After all, when the Swine Flu news first broke, it sounded pretty scary. Mexico was reporting people dying like flies and the US border was clearly as porous as a sieve with no netting. Yet, at that time, Obama saw fit to declare only a public health emergency, freeing up stockpiled antivirals and kickstarting urgent research on a vaccine. Now that we know that Mexican H1N1 is hardly more dangerous than standard flu, responds to most antivirals and vaccine manufacture is well underway, why does Obama think it time to declare a national emergency? The health system does not yet need the extra stock of antivirals that the order releases (and there are other ways to release those stocks, if I recall correctly). What other advantage could be gained from such a declaration? Most newspaper articles rabbit on about making it easier to make decisions, including funding ones and information collection, but this is all quite peripheral and unlikely to cause great problems.
I suspect I am being paranoid (which doesn’t, unfortunately, mean I am wrong), but declaring a national emergency essentially revokes the right of habeas corpus in respect to the subject of the emergency (viz. the Swine Flu). Lawyers are welcome to correct me if I am wrong, but this entitles Sebelius to produce an emergency law making it illegal to refuse to have the Swine Flu vaccine. I suspect that the point of the declaration of a national emergency is a sharp needle point that all Americans are going to find themselves at the end of.
I certainly hope I am wrong.
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Oct 25 09 2:37 pm
The truth is likely to be much more prosaic.
Obama’s health reforms are in struggle street. Elevating Swine Flu and being strong about it makes the public option look that much better than taking two Aspirin and going to bed.
JC
Oct 25 09 4:16 pm
JC: I did wonder about Obama beefing up his health image, but I couldn’t see that it will really do him much good. He has already lost the initiative in that he decided to demonise his opposition, instead of working out a way of getting them alongside.
Of course, Sebelius now has sufficient power (theoretically) to imprison without trial all the opponents of the health bill. But not even I am that paranoid to suggest such a thing…
Oct 25 09 9:00 pm
I honestly think it’s a money thing. US citizens must specifically opt out otherwise they are a captive pool of patients waiting for their shots (which is the majority). If Obama gives the say so an awfully big cheque is about to be written to a vaccine manufacturer (who have to get rid of their stockpile somehow).
I’m not even being cynical on this issue, and that is a sad thing- everyone can see this for what it is, and yet it’s going to happen anyway.
Indeed. I can hear the US vaccine manufacturers licking their lips from Auckland
Oct 26 09 12:37 pm
I don’t believe the Swine Flu is a ‘National Emergency’, and I only think this will draw more panic among the public.
Seems more like a distraction to keep attention from all the other problems that don’t seem to be on their way to being fixed anytime soon.
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