[extropy-chat] Presidents and vaccines

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> As kind of an aside, in the current presidential
> election
> there is a big deal being made about the shortage of
> flu
> vaccine.  This struck me as so odd, for it is not
> clear
> what a US president has to do with the availability
> of a
> vaccine.

It is true that the US President's staff does not
directly manufacture vaccine.  However, there used to
be more companies that manufactured this vaccine; they
left the market because it was unprofitable.
Directing corporate welfare is definitely within the
powers of said office.

It is also worth noting that this is one of the more
concrete scenarios the military predicted, when asked
about how bioweapon-based terrorism (which the current
US President had made a big deal of defending the US
against) might manifest.  Damage to the US in terms of
lost productivity, lost morale, and so forth - not to
mention negative effects from the shortage of the
vaccine itself, which we are now seeing.  (People
fighting each other for shots, medical personnel under
threat of legal action - and probably at least one
medic actually fined or jailed who would not otherwise
be - for violating the government's rationing of the
vaccine, opportunists soaking up capital for providing
a service that would otherwise have been commonplace,
more distrust of the government when politicians
allocate some of the vaccine to themselves, et
cetera.)  Not as dramatic as 9/11, but far more
insidious, and perhaps more damaging overall for that.
In fact, al-Quaeda could issue a statement taking
responsibility for it and, based purely on what's been
happening and is likely to happen, be widely believed
if there is otherwise even a shred of doubt that the
vaccine contamination was accidental.  (Short version:
the US President made a big fuss over protecting us
from stuff like this, and then this happened anyway.)

> No.  In any case people seem to be all in a dither
> because
> they may miss their flu shot this year.  But until a
> few
> years ago no one had a flu shot.  Somehow we managed
> to
> cope.  We will again.

This is true.  It's hardly doomsday (except for the
few people who will die of the flu, which is part of
why we'd been encouraged to get flu shots these past
few years).  But note that we didn't have the Internet
until a few decades ago, nor did we have a US
President (or a US) merely two and a half centuries
ago.  Our current standard of living, including our
current life span, depends largely on things that most
of us can do without in theory, especially for a very
short while.