States Make Progress But Still Unprepared for Pandemic, Says U.S.

By | February 22, 2008

  • February 22, 2008 at 12:35 pm
    Dread says:
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    Our country is un-prepared for a pandemic says the CDC. Yesteday’s news carried a story that this years batch of flu vaccine “missed the mark” and is only 40% effective. Another story tells that upwards to 85% of RX drugs (Lipitor included) are manufactured in China, a country that has no quality standards for drug manufacturing.

    Why is it we can spend billions to play with a useless space station and shuttle project, fund a no-win war in Iraq, and send aid to foreign countries but we can’t take care of our own people? As one of the richest countries in the world in terms of human and financial resources, why can’t we find solutions?

    Think about this: what has our illustrous scientific/medical community found a cure for since polio vaccine? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !!!! We still have the common cold; the flu; breast,colon,skin,and pancreatic cancers; heart disease; parkinsons disease; leukemia; chrones disease; and the list goes on.

    We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of “research” an come up empty. Now the FDC insults us by giving an “A” for effort. All of the profit lies in research, diagnosis, and treatment of these diseases. There is no incentive to eliminate them. Actually, it would be bad for the economy.

  • February 22, 2008 at 12:52 pm
    Al says:
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    The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis

    By Paul A. Offit
    New Haven:Yale University Press, 2005. 238 pp. ISBN: 0-300-10864-8, $27.50

    Describes the failure to completely inactivate the first lots of polio vaccine, and the resulting epidemic of iatrogenic paralytic polio.

    This case set a precedent for liability without negligence that ultimately almost destroyed the vaccine industry in the United States.

    So, thanks to trial lawyers, we are not as healthy as we might have been. Imagine that.

    As for the “no win war in Iraq,” we are winning and will continue to win unless a democrat gets elected president. May the Lord have mercy on the USA and prevent such a horrible thing from befalling us.

  • February 22, 2008 at 1:38 am
    Dave says:
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    Al, how do you figure we’re winning the war? What is your definition of a “win”? While I support our military, I have begun to question the decision to invade Iraq. Our great “intelligence agencies” blew it with bad information on WMD’s. America looked like a fool when nothing was found. Granted Sadaam and his two sons were bad people, but the country was doing a hell of a lot better than it is now. We’re spending hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars there and we both know it’s going to be a money pit for years to come. In the meantime, we’re up to our eyeballs with social problems here at home. We can’t afford $90 BILLION a year to fight insurgents house to house. Who gave us the right to IMPOSE democracy on a people and country that wasn’t ready for it and may not want it? Iraq is VietNam with lipstick on it.

  • February 22, 2008 at 1:51 am
    Al says:
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    Dave – First you need to get your news from somewhere besides the networks’ evening newscasts and your local fishwrap. I suggest

    http://www.longwarjournal.org/ and http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

    for starters. Every single indicator, from US troop casualties to Iraqi civilian casualties to Al Qaeda in Iraq captures and casualties is in our favor. The Sunnis are forming “Sons of Iraq” brigades to ferret out and expose Al Qaeda in their neighborhoods. The Shia are cowed into inactivity in Basra. Electricity, oil production, clean water, you name it, it’s looking up. To day that Iraq was better off under Saddam is really an ill-informed statement.

    What right do we have to be there? Like it or not, war is a natural condition of mankind. In war, you can either deliver blows or receive them. God help those who can’t deliver them, either through lack of will or cowardice. We need to be in Al Qaeda’s back yard effectively to monitor and fight them rather than await their next move. We are being aggressive, which is preferrable in warfare to hunkering down and hoping to weather the storm.

    Google clinton iraq 2000 and read a few articles, then tell me that we were right to lallygag during the 90’s rather than to put boots on butts.

  • February 25, 2008 at 8:48 am
    wudchuck says:
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    back to the orig article; if you look in the past several years, we are never sure of which strain of the flu will venture its head out and attack our bodies. it will never be 100%. i think it’s great that even 40% effective. if we in life construe that everything is protected 100% then your are living in a daydream. remember the 9/11; nobody was expecting that – again, that was definately not protecting 100%. look to the south of the border, we can’t keep all those immigrants from entering illegally, but we can do is try to get to those businesses and get them to release those who are not eligble for employment. now the issue of CHINA: why do we keep marketing our product to be made there if they are not following the the guidelines of quality of goods. why can’t we bring back business back to the USA and possibly sway back the recession by causing jobs. our country understands quality of goods and so do our consumers. China has made a mess of the toy industry already.



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