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for now, and allow the very old and very young to get theirs first.
How Bush dropped the ball was not by issuing an EO calling for strict rationing, keeping it away from his constituency (the healthy rich) and reserving it for the people who really need it. Given the tight supply, these lines should NEVER have been allowed to happen! This is insane. This is sheer incompetence!
Hospitals are shortstaffed and stressed to the max right now, and that's without all the flu patients that come in every winter. The increased load will turn a crisis situation into a catastrophe very quickly.
Yes, deaths will likely rise from complications from flu this year. Yes, the flaws in the healthcare system will become so incredibly obvious that nobody will be able to ignore them. Yes, we're due for a major meltdown.
This country has simply got to start taking public health more seriously. Just as poverty is a WMD, so is the neglect of public health, and the diseases of the poor have a nasty habit of being transmitted to the rich, no matter what sort of gold plated concierge care they enjoy. Bush, of course, thinks the system is great the way it is.
They ignore the rest of us at their extreme peril. Flu is the least of the risk they run.
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