Not Innoculated Against Stupidity

By Keith R. Schmitz

Who knows how bad the Swine Flu invasion will eventually be? Are people being crazed about the prospect of a plague sweeping the country or right acting like too much is being made about this?

Nevertheless like many things politics pokes in.

With the debate we've been having over sick pay in the metro area this argument takes on a new complexion. The United States and Milwaukee in particular has no state mandated policy on sick pay. Here's where this issue could hit home.

In other countries when a worker starts to feel the aches and sniffles that may indicate the onset of that or another disease, there isn't this agonizing decision about staying home or dragging through a day or two of work.

Here, many people have to suck it up. Remember the lozenge commercial that ran recently of a woman working the frozen food aisle and an officer blows into the scene out of no where. Dumb concept, but the woman pleads the to fantasy officer that she's sick. But this is America, land of having to drag your sorry behind through the shift. And she's handling food.

There will be countless people that many people who we could encountering through this health incident handling our food, making our beds, taking care of our elderly parents. None of them can take the recommended three days off when symptoms become present, or if members of their family because this would be bad for business.

The Swine Flu outbreak could be overblown. Or, if you want something that is bad for business, this is it.

Panning Pandemic Preparedness = Poor PR Planning

by folkbum

Your Republican Party has some 'splaining to do:

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans. [. . .]

The attack on pandemic preparation became so central to the GOP strategies that AP reported in February: "Republicans, meanwhile, plan to push for broader and deeper tax cuts, to trim major spending provisions that support Democrats' longer-term policy goals, and to try to knock out what they consider questionable spending items, such as $870 million to combat the flu and $400 million to slow the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases."

Famously, Maine Senator Susan Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."

Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure.

With luck and some hard work by public health officials (not to mention lots of hand washing--I want to see suds, people!), the current Swine Flu outbreak will not become pandemic, as 3rd Way fears it might. However, as John Nichols points out in the piece quoted above, the effect of precautions or recovery from an outbreak may well be to slow economic recovery in parts of the country--something that a boost in spending months ago might have prevented.