– APRIL 1, 2009
POSTED IN: ARTICLES
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Len Saputo, MD
April 1, 2009
On October 23, 2009, President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, plunging the H1N1 controversy ever more deeply into an Orwellian world of disinformation, fear, and confusion. The government’s program of swine flu vaccination was already the most ambitious of its kind since the anti-polio campaign of the 1950s. And now, this surprise declaration from the president raised anxiety levels by giving federal health officials much greater powers in the face of a supposed pandemic. The ostensible reason for Obama’s heavy-handed act – at least according to the official explanation – was merely to authorize hospitals to set up emergency health-care operations in nonstandard ways and locations. Yet this explanation was odd in the extreme, given that a national emergency declaration is just not necessary in order to simply waive something as simple as hospital-tent rules; Obama could have easily accomplished the same thing with an executive order.1
Len Saputo, MD
April 1, 2009
On October 23, 2009, President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, plunging the H1N1 controversy ever more deeply into an Orwellian world of disinformation, fear, and confusion. The government’s program of swine flu vaccination was already the most ambitious of its kind since the anti-polio campaign of the 1950s. And now, this surprise declaration from the president raised anxiety levels by giving federal health officials much greater powers in the face of a supposed pandemic. The ostensible reason for Obama’s heavy-handed act – at least according to the official explanation – was merely to authorize hospitals to set up emergency health-care operations in nonstandard ways and locations. Yet this explanation was odd in the extreme, given that a national emergency declaration is just not necessary in order to simply waive something as simple as hospital-tent rules; Obama could have easily accomplished the same thing with an executive order.1
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