I wondered if my university’s website was going to have something about the latest questions about the “swine flu,” and it did not disappoint. Swine flu reports are all over the news sites, yet it seems that some hard questions have not been asked.
First and most important, why do we have the constant reminders of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic that killed people all over the globe? For that matter, why doesn’t the government and the New York Times repeat the stories of the Black Death that swept Europe and Britain from 1347-1351 or the 1603 Plague in London or the Russian Plague of 1770-1772?
Lest one think I am being facetious, the conditions that gave the world the pandemic of 1918-1919 hardly exist today. The flu spread rapidly in the United States as crowded troop ships returning from Europe were packed with young men, giving rise to conditions that permitted the sickness to spread quickly. In the United States, huge war bond rallies brought thousands of people in close proximity to one another. Europeans were recovering from the war, and many people were weakened by hunger and other maladies from the conflict.
Furthermore, that was an era in which people were not as healthy as they are today (despite the gloom and doom one might hear from the Ralph Naders of the world). Life expectancy for Americans at that time was considerably less than it is today, and it was not unusual then for large number of people to be stricken with epidemics.
Second, and in light of the demands for emergency government powers, what is the U.S. government’s record in heading off pandemics? Many of us remember the swine flu fiasco of 1976, when President Gerald Ford was vaccinated on television and Congress quickly voted huge sums of money for vaccines. (Rep. Ron Paul reports that only he and the late Larry McDonald, both physicians, voted against the appropriation.)
According to government statistics, one person—one—actually died of swine flu in the United States at that time. However, about 30 people died after reactions to the vaccines, and many more were stricken with serious illnesses. Unfortunately, even that sorry history has not reduced the True Believers’ faith in the government’s ability to save us from the pandemic the government insists is just around the corner.
For example, Howard Markel, who directs the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and is a consultant for the Centers for Disease Control, recently was feted in Time for his trust in the wisdom of the government:
Markel says the political climate in the U.S. is much less combustible today than in the post-Watergate era, when Ford faced a skeptical public. Even so, he says, citizens still need to trust that the government is working for the greater good. He says, “The good news is that our surveillance, methodology and public health professionals have never been better. But we are human and mistakes may be made—as happened with the 1976 swine flu affair—and we may jump the gun in the hope of preserving life. The current outbreak is a situation in flux. The American public has to be forgiving and patient and do [its] part too.”
Yet what is it that government is doing? It is demanding emergency powers, and once those powers are seized, government officials are loathe to relinquish them. Yes, government employs “experts,” but all too often “experts” are wrong. It is one thing for an expert to have a mistaken opinion, but give that expert both a mistaken opinion and “emergency power” and there is a tragedy in the making.
If someone in government wants to give me an educated opinion of what to do, that is fine. However, people in government generally don’t stop with issuing opinions. It is the set of orders coming from those officials that worries me.
