Swine Epidemic

In spite of your fear, do what you have to do. Chin-Ning Chu

President Barrack Obama has declared the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus a medical emergency. But what does that truly mean? Not much, to the average person actually. The proclamation of swine flu as a medical emergency does not give reason to hide it out under your covers; it merely means that now hospitals can skip over some red tape to keep sick people away from the rest of the sick population. With more and more cases of swine flu being acknowledged everyday it is hard on hospitals to room all their sick patients. An even more daunting task is keeping patients, whose immune systems are already down, away from the risk of the H1N1 virus. Now that the proclamation has been made, hospitals can work to create off-site facilities for people with flu symptoms to go to get the proper help. These off-site facilities are a barrier for other sick people against the raging virus and have been greatly needed. The red tape that hospitals had great difficulty passing in past months has been lifted by this announcement made by President Obama. The true question though, is why did he wait so long? The H1N1 virus has been attacking our neighbors to the south since last year; it managed to kill hundreds of Mexicans and the fear it would migrate north was realized not many months after. Sure, the cases slowed down for a couple of months but this past month you turn to any channel and you will hear more news about the spread of the swine. It had been previously predicted that the flu would return in the coming months after its break and once it did the president should have immediately made it a health emergency. Personally, I have never been a fan of any kind of red tape. I am not really sure I see a reason for it other than financially and the way Obama has been throwing money around doesn’t seem like it should matter even in that case. It seems like a risk was being taken on the health of people for the past month and for no true reason. Swine flu is not only a force to contend with but evidence has shown it comes with some troublesome friends that can bring harm, even death, to the elderly and young. I think this proclamation is long over due and I just hope no one’s life was actually risked by slow reaction to this harmful virus.

To see a map of Swine Flu activity click here.