Last week I was home sick for two days with flu like symptoms, so of course my thoughts roamed to the swine flu outbreak in Mexico.

I had enough symptoms that I was considering getting checked, but only some, and since all of my symptoms were generally minor and non specific, I decided to ride it out.

I feel better, thanks.

But the swine flu topic itself has gone in several wacky directions, and that’s where my thoughts are today.

First of all, I am not happy with how our nation’s leaders are responding.  While many countries are canceling flights from Mexico, we are effectively doing nothing.   Yes that concerns me a lot, but what really bothers me is the complete lack of sense about why.

President Obama had this to say about closing the border to Mexico:

I’ve consulted with our public health officials extensively on a day to day basis. In some cases, an hour to hour basis. At this point, they have not recommended a border closing. From their perspective, it would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out, because we already have cases here in the United States. We have ramped up screening efforts as well as made sure that additional supplies are there on the border, so that we can prepare in the eventuality that we have to do more than we’re doing currently. But the most important thing right now that public health officials have indicated is that we treat this the same way that we would treat other flu outbreaks, just understanding that because this is a new strain…

Seriously?  The whole barn door analogy is pretty close to the most idiotic thing I have heard him say personally, and from a health standpoint, it is the most idiotic position I can imagine.

Naturally this makes sense from Janet Napolitano, who believes that illegal immigration is not a crime despite Federal law to the contrary.

Mark Steyn and Hugh Hewitt answered this the best:

HH: All right, now we get to the washing hands. What do you make of that non-answer, Mark Steyn?

MS: Well, it makes no sense, because clearly there’s a difference. 

It’s true, obviously, that there are cases of this thing already in the United States. But it makes a huge difference if there are ten people with this flu in the United States, or if there are 2,000 people with this thing in the United States. So the idea that you don’t close the border just because one guy with the flu has already slipped across is completely idiotic, and it’s kind of embarrassing to hear a president, I understand he’s not an epidemiologist, and I’m not either, but to stand up and say anything like that in public is very bizarre. I see John McCain is calling for the border to be sealed. This is a man who when it comes to immigration, generally takes the view that the border cannot be sealed, that in fact the southern border of the United States cannot be enforced. 

So I would be interested to know if it does become a pandemic, and people do decide they have to close the border, how actually they’re going to go about doing that, because a lot of these people are the same people who told us that you simply can’t enforce that border anyway.

HH: From the National Review’s The Corner blog, an epidemiologist wrote in, and I want to read the first paragraph, “Well, I am an epidemiologist of infectious diseases, no less, and what Obama and Napolitano before him said is utterly preposterous. Every infected patient is a potential index case, that is the case from whom an outbreak spreads.”

MS: Right.

HH: “The math is very simple. More index cases, more opportunities for outbreaks.” There are lots of horses still in the barn, Mark Steyn. I think that’s what the President doesn’t get.

MS: Yeah, that’s right, and it is complicated by the fact that as far as one can tell from these early indications, your chances of being effectively treated for this flu are much better in the United States than in Mexico. So if you are someone who gets sick in Mexico, or if you’re just someone in Mexico who doesn’t fancy your chances with this flu, then actually now’s a pretty good time to come to the United States. So I mean, this is a border issue. I mean, this is different from what I was talking about earlier with the rural China to Hong Kong to London and Toronto thing, because in a sense, when you have a third world nation like Mexico bordering a first world medical system, you’ve got all kinds of other pressures, too.

It also occurred to me also that the people trying to cross desert wastelands to get here are prime carriers of the disease, people malnourished, weak and likely dehydrated whose immune systems are vulnerable.

So of course we should ignore them. 

And that ignores the commercial and legal transports.  I doubt that the Mexican tourism industry has any comment, right?  We wouldn’t want to crimp the style of the resorts in Cabo…

The reaction around the web and the globe is all over the place.

This link suggests this strain is no worse then the usual flu we deal with every year, while this one worries about it mixing with other viruses to make super viruses or something.

Well, which is it?  In this link you can read that on one hand that  the cases from Mexico were less than projected, and on the other hand to beware the second wave of infestations.

And the most definitive action from the feds?  Removing the word Swine from the conversation so we don’t offend pigs, or something.

Meanwhile the vice president suggests he would recommend not riding mass transit, which is wonderfully ironic, as Mark Steyn also notes:

MS: Yes, I found it very interesting when the Vice President was talking about his own life, and he said he’d advise his family not to travel on the subway or on public transportation. I found this very interesting, because essentially, the whole Obama administration approach to public transportation is that instead of driving around in our big SUVs, we should all be strap-hanging on the subway and on these various light rail projects together. 

 Yes, and all sharing our little germs and all that.  Days like today I am glad I don’t carpool.  My car, my germs…and my choice of music or radio.

 Simply put, I see this as a chance for the Obama Administration to show real leadership, but instead we see pandering to tourism, to Mexico and to those future Democratic voters from Mexico, a little pig like political correctness, a mixed message on public transportation  and we see a complete lack of comprehension of the subject at hand from a medical standpoint.

This may not be a big deal now.  The average person in the US stands a good chance of surviving this simply because we are in better health overall than Mexico and many other countries, so this may not be like the 1918 influenza pandemic

But at the same time, if the virus really can mutate, it very well could be worse.

And right now, we are doing nothing substantive to prepare for that possibility.

Leadership is demonstrated when we make realistic preparations, not when we sample the political climate and react according to those needs.

It would really suck if the Obama administration is someday known as the administration that was ill prepared for a pandemic because “the barn door was already open”…

Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.