thursday NAFTA flu pandemania

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Giordano nails it. I've been thinking about what a pox upon the people of Mexico and the United States NAFTA has been through this whole ordeal, but really it's been bad for the whole world and everything on it.

World Map

HHS... bunch of reassuring and self-congratulatory blather....

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Update Noon Thirtyish

Scientists See This Flu Strain As Relatively Mild

And I tend to agree. Where yesterday the number of places with outbreaks doubled and number of cases did too, today it's only jumped from 91 cases in the United State to 109, and no new deaths. I'm, of course, not sure this reflects the reality of the disease instead of the reality of the testing, but it seems that when you get away from the intense viral load in Mexico, you come out with a much less-threatening influenza. There is the possibility that it is just being ill-managed and the viral loads are building, but it's looking as though the world may have dodged a bullet. I don't think it's time to relax, but it may be time to take some comfort.

I am very angry that this has been handled so poorly. The Obama administration seems to be laboring under the delusion that the more you talk about it on the internet, the more you are doing about it. This, I already know, is a common misconception of businesspersons under the age of 50. I don't know how many times I've had to point out that the fact of something being stated on their webpage does not make it ground truth, that expressed ideas and intentions are not executed ideas and intentions, ANYTHING can be going on while CALLING it these lofty, efficient, altruistic things. In this case, it's more like NOTHING is going on.

Time for Zen Master Dogen to chime in, here:

Stop doing and perform!

And he did not mean "perform" as in do a skit of your responsibilities; he meant "perform" as in performing on a contract, getting it handled, fixing it. These clowns are running around acting as though they are in the middle of performing their duties, but there's no there there. Two podcasts from HHS now have, essentially, made a big deal out of the dissemination of stockpiled anit-viral meds -- one of which, Tamiflu, I heard was akin to snorting Angle Dust. Do you grok that this means their entire workforce is claiming to be on it because some shipping clerks sorta got some of the states' allotments out the door? They've also shipped out samples of the virus to vaccine manufacturers to begin developing one. They've also advised airport personnel in the art of determining when people may be ill and told us we should hold off our trips to Mexico unless it's essential for us to go. I know the protocols for meetings and clearances and those idiotic press appearances take up a lot of time, but, well, crap. All that they have actually done so far should take one day at most. The rest of the week has been spent flipping about how to take the heat off the pork industry, and their ace turned out to be renaming it the 2009 H1N1 flu. [Red-faced, spittle flying, desk items rattling....]

And, between eight years of * and Fudd and the internet and a long bout of activism educating me, I do not trust my government even a little. Every sentence that issues from any of them can be, is designed to be, picked apart in a thousand ways. It's designed that way lest anyone be able to come back someday and say they were wrong. THAT is what has taken the week instead of part of a day.

So, maybe you can see now why people like Tom Philpott are affording me some real relief in this week-long festival of delusion letting actuality play out completely unheeded. How is this better than anarchy? We're all taught to despise the nihilism of anarchy, but, er, IT JUST COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE LESS EFFECTIVE, LESS PRODUCTIVE OF ACTUAL BENEFIT TO THE PEOPLE, THAN THIS.

Think about it.

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Update Four Thirtyish

More great work from Philpott.