Swine vs. seasonal…

An interesting  report out of Sweden says the seasonal flu is killing more people than H1N1 is.     Could that be why individual US states have already stopped reporting new cases of the swine version?   And where in big media have you read that a secondary bacterial infection has been responsible for the majority of deaths in otherwise healthy adults with H1N1?

I’m beginning to wonder if Rahm Emanuel’s belief that you should never let a crisis go to waste is leading the administration to hype H1N1 to portray the government as savior.   I expected them to take full credit for the pandemic response systems which the Bush Administration put in place.  You youngsters should remember that the National Civil Defense system grew out of World War I,  but was at its height during the Cold War with the threat of nuclear-armed missiles from the Soviet Union.

I’m not a fan of Wikipedia,  but it does have a decent entry on the system,  which faded into obscurity and defunding after the Cold War,  and has now been wholly supplanted by Homeland Security.    Oddly enough,  the first county in the nation to have adequate shelter space and basic supplies for its citizens was Montgomery County,  Alabama,  largely because county officials  and the mayor of Montgomery put an extremely practical farmer and aviator in charge of the task.