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Vilsack rips media over swine flu, I mean, H1N1
Hog markets are depressed. Farmers struggle to put food on the table. Hard times are seeping into the rural economy, hurting owners of grocery and hardware stores.
Blame the media, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, unleashing several lengthy rants about the evils of oversimplification during a 25-minute teleconference with reporters on Thursday.
Vilsack scolded the media for continuing to call the new strain of pandemic H1N1 flu by its more common name: swine flu.
“It is not swine flu,” Vilsack thundered. “Every time that is said, consumers get confused. Schools that are considering purchases for school lunch and school breakfast programs get confused, get worried.”
Vilsack implied that pork consumption is down because people worry they can catch swine flu — whoops, H1N1 — from eating pork. (You can’t.) Instead of stressing safety of pork, or sharing details about how the USDA plans to keep watch for the flu-that-shall-not-be-named in hogs, Vilsack dressed down reporters for harming farmers.
“I know this may seem difficult for people, or silly, unless you’re the pork producer, unless you’re out there trying to make a living and take care of your family,” said Vilsack, heading straight over the top.
“And you pick up the paper, you turn on the radio, you turn on the television, and you see this thing mischaracterized, and then you try to go to the market and sell your pork, and you get less than what you’re spending to produce it. And so you’ve got to tell your family you’ve got to do without.”
Sugar shortage spawns sweet jokes from late-night comedian
By Christopher Doering The surge in sugar prices and potential risk of a shortage has provided some sweet fodder for one late-night comedian who can’t help but poke fun at the attention the tasty ingredient is receiving. Stephen Colbert, who hosts the Colbert Report on Comedy Central, spent part of his show this week lamenting the sugar crisis. After showing a montage of television clips about the sugar situation, Colbert proceeded to break a glass cover — similar to one containing a fire extinguisher — and pulled out a bag of sugar, which he dosed all over himself. “Oh my God, there’s a sugar shortage,” said Colbert. “How could this happen. Well, like interstate highways and potable water it’s the government’s fault.” Large U.S. food companies, including Kraft Foods, General Mills Inc and Hershey Co, have been pushing the Obama administration to ease sugar import curbs, citing forecasts for unprecedented sugar shortages that could result in higher retail prices and possible job losses. In a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack dated Aug. 5, the companies and other groups warned that “our nation will virtually run out of sugar,” if a USDA forecast is accurate. “Can you imagine an America with no sugar?” said Colbert. “Juice would contain nothing but 10 percent juice and we’d all be eating uncaramelized apples. What are we going to do?”
For more information on the sugar shortage, click here.
I wonder, are there any sugar reserves in Afghanistan ?
The answer is 99,439. Pass it on.
During his first week on the job, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said no one knows for sure how many people work at the Agriculture Department. Speaking to USDA employees and later to reporters, he used that startling anomaly as an argument to update USDA’s computer equipment.
Like the admonition against saying “never” or “always” during an argument, there could be a corollary: Never say “no one knows” in a bureaucracy.
A USDA employee quickly provided an answer for Reuters: 99,439 fulltime, part-time and temporary federal employees as of Monday based on figures from the payroll agency.
There were some qualifiers in Vilsack’s statement. He said he asked the Obama transition team and “I was told no one knows for sure how many people work at (USDA). They could tell me how many checks are issued, but not how many people actually work here.”
A former USDA official snorted at the idea of an uncountable workforce. ”That may be almost an urban myth,” he said. “It’s not a simple answer” but is within reach.
There are some complexities. For example, USDA employment rises to include Forest Service “smoke jumpers” and wildfire crews during the summer and shrinks during the winter.
Then there’s the roughly 9,400 people in the county offices who are part of the Farm Service Agency. They perform federal tasks but are hired by locally elected committees.
Misplaced Priorities: Swine Flu vs. Smallpox:
Why is the central government making such a fuss about H1N1 Swine Influenza? And before that the H5N1Chicken Influenza? And before that the Duck Influenza A? Our government is telling us, if they don’t immunize our people, we might have another 1918 influenza panendemic.
Horse feathers! In 1918 we had no antibiotics to treat the secondary pneumonia and the bacterial pleural empyema that were the real killers back then. Today we have readily available, effective antibiotics and the physicians and surgeons who know how to use them. This, rather than some government immunization program, is the reason 1918 has not been repeated!
I find it ironic that it was the central government’s “expert,” Dr Anthony Fauci who capitulated to the demands of “President Cheney.” And disallowed patients and their personal physicians from being able to voluntarily immunize against smallpox. During the run up to Cheney’s phony war against Iraq. Cheney didn’t want (the extremely low incidence of) smallpox adverse reactions to spoil his little gift to the military industrial complex.
Since 1972,except for the military, there’s been no widespread smallpox immunization program in the United States. You must understand that, it is the loss of the herd immunity to smallpox that has left us highly vulnerable to smallpox biological warfare.
Attention! There is a distinct possibility that the Russians have sold weaponized smallpox to the Iranians. And in the event of an Iranian smallpox attack on our people, no Fauci crash smallpox immunization is going to save us. Why, Fauci and the federal government can’t even supply the vaccine, in a timely manner, in the relatively innocuous Swine Flu situation.
If you want to do something for the this country, Dr. Fauci, pull your head out of the sand, and go back and undo the smallpox trap that you and the CDC’s Dr. Julie Gerberding, on the orders of President Cheney, unwittingly, set for the American people. It’s for patients and their own physicians, not some group of government doctors, to decide re: smallpox vaccinations. Vaccinations that should be, instead, carried out in a timely and orderly fashion.
Listen! A biologic warfare smallpox attack on the American people, who are rapidly losing their herd immunity, is the real threat. Not the swine, chicken or duck flu. If you don’t believe me just ask the American Indian who, unlike the Europeans, had no centuries old vaccination program for, nor herd immunity to smallpox!
George Meredith MD
Virginia Beach