Don't even have to wait for phone calls this morning on C-SPAN -- all I have to do is listen to Ed Gillespie run his mouth. You name it when it comes to the Bush legacy and Gillespie will either lie about it or put some weird spin on it. You know those domestic terrorists like Eric Rudolph and Tim McVeigh? The nutcases who bomb federal buildings and abortion clinics? Gillespie calls them people who "love life." When it comes to Ed's ability to cater to the far-reich wing wackaloons, political hack doesn't even begin to cover it.
The S.O. switched the tv to NBC because he couldn't stand to listen to Gillespie for one more second. Guess it's tin foil hat time in Georgia, too. According to the local news folks, the state's lone case of swine flu has magically vanished. The state health department has decided that even though the patient is in a hospital in LaGrange, it's not a Georgia case after all. It's Kentucky's, because that's where the woman is from.
Then again, Georgia is a state that's great at putting a happy spin on problems by wishing them away. They've reduced their poverty rate by denying (or cutting off) welfare benefits to most of the people who qualify -- if they never issue a TANF check, they can claim there's no one in the state who needs the help.
And, speaking of stupidity on a massive scale, a definite failure to communicate, the AJC has an article today about the state health department doing a fax to all the clinicians in the state asking them to report possible swine flu cases ASAP to the health department, including sending in specimens to be checked. Except they didn't bother to provide instructions on just exactly what they meant by specimens, how to take them, and where to send them. One doctor said that he did have a patient he had questions about, so he called the state health department for information. He got voice mail. He persisted, finally connected with a human who told him to "use the special packaging," which he didn't have. She said they'd send him some -- but by the time he received it, too much time would have elapsed and the sample would be useless. He had taken a throat swab, but wound up just throwing it away.
The S.O. switched the tv to NBC because he couldn't stand to listen to Gillespie for one more second. Guess it's tin foil hat time in Georgia, too. According to the local news folks, the state's lone case of swine flu has magically vanished. The state health department has decided that even though the patient is in a hospital in LaGrange, it's not a Georgia case after all. It's Kentucky's, because that's where the woman is from.
Then again, Georgia is a state that's great at putting a happy spin on problems by wishing them away. They've reduced their poverty rate by denying (or cutting off) welfare benefits to most of the people who qualify -- if they never issue a TANF check, they can claim there's no one in the state who needs the help.
And, speaking of stupidity on a massive scale, a definite failure to communicate, the AJC has an article today about the state health department doing a fax to all the clinicians in the state asking them to report possible swine flu cases ASAP to the health department, including sending in specimens to be checked. Except they didn't bother to provide instructions on just exactly what they meant by specimens, how to take them, and where to send them. One doctor said that he did have a patient he had questions about, so he called the state health department for information. He got voice mail. He persisted, finally connected with a human who told him to "use the special packaging," which he didn't have. She said they'd send him some -- but by the time he received it, too much time would have elapsed and the sample would be useless. He had taken a throat swab, but wound up just throwing it away.
LNA may have its act together, but, if Georgia is any indication, a lot of the states don't. Once again I'm thinking we'd better hope we never do have a truly serious air-borne illness hit, because if one does, we're well and truly fucked.
Nan, that is definitely a sad commentary on the medical state of affairs in Georgia. I have heard similar stories coming out of the county health departments in this area.
ReplyDeleteI'd view it more as a sad commentary on the way even highly competent people can be lousy at communicating. Whoever drafted the original fax assumed the doctors already knew what to do and just had to be reminded to do it when the reality was they didn't.
ReplyDeleteOnce again I'm thinking we'd better hope we never do have a truly serious air-borne illness hit, because if one does, we're well and truly fucked..
ReplyDeleteMaybe, I don't know, but I think that if a serious air-borne illness hits that it would only kill about half of us.
And that isn't a bad thing being as there are so many of us anyway. There would still be about 3.5 billion of us here to continue on.
Even if it knocked us down to just one billion that still wouldn't be the end of it all for us.
Maybe it would just be a new beginning of doing things in wiser ways with more respect for the planet and mother earth.
Don't care if it gets me, I'm omnipresent.
ReplyDeleteGarbo is sick and this just vindicates my lack of desire to take her for testing. What would be the point?
ReplyDeleteBBC - A few years ago I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about a Finnish philosopher who had written quite persuasively that what the world needs is a really good plague. Except he wasn't advocating a 50% population drop. He thought more like 90% would be good.
ReplyDeleteUp the coast a bit from you.....we passed a law last mid term election, banning same sex marriage.
ReplyDeleteThis, despite no gay couple has ever applied to be married in SC's history!!!!!
I think of how things were back in Michigan, and it seems like a feverish dream.....