Breitbart, Examiner editor use H1N1 vaccine projections to attack health care reform
Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com highlighted a piece by Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott which blamed the H1N1 vaccine shortage on the government and suggested that the shortage is indicative of the government's ability to reform health care. However, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Thomas Friedan has stated that "[w]e are not near where the vaccine manufacturers predicted we would be" and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has called the projections the government received from the manufacturers "overly rosy."
Breitbart, Examiner editor use "swine flu vaccine shortage" to attack health care reform
Tapscott: "The same government that only weeks ago promised abundant supplies of swine flu vaccine by mid-October will be running your health care system under Obamacare." From Tapscott's post on WashingtonExaminer.com's Beltway Confidential blog:
President Obama's late-night declaration of a nationwide public health emergency last night shouldn't be allowed to obscure the most important lesson of the developing swine flu crisis - The same government that only weeks ago promised abundant supplies of swine flu vaccine by mid-October will be running your health care system under Obamacare.
On Sept. 13, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, told ABC's This Week program that the government was on schedule to deliver an "ample supply" of swine flu vaccine by mid-October:
"We're on track to have an ample supply rolling by the middle of October. But we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October. We'll get the vaccine out the door as fast as it rolls off the production line."
But here we are five weeks later and news reports are coming in from across the nation of long waiting lines of people wanting the shot, but being turned away because of grossly inadequate supplies. The typical explanation from public health offiials [sic] is that the swine flu vaccine requires more time to be cultivated than seasonal flu vaccine.
That's no doubt true, but did federal public health officials just discover that fact? These are the same government officials who will be in charge of your health care under the government-run health care system being sought by Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress.
[...]
The [national emergency] declaration [on H1N1] will allow waiving of federal regulations on a case-by-case basis. But how will we waive an entire government-run health care system?
Here's something else to think about: How will Obama and congressional Democrats seek to take advantage of this public health crisis? This is, after all, the administration that never lets a good crisis go to waste, right? [10/24/09]
Breitbart's Biggovernment.com highlights Tapscott's post. From Biggovernment.com:
[Screen capture
10/26/09]
CDC, Sebelius say manufacturers' projections of available vaccines were too high
CDC Director: "We are not near where the vaccine manufacturers predicted we would be." As evidence that public health officials are saying that supplies are "grossly inadequate" because "the swine flu vaccine requires more time to be cultivated than seasonal flu vaccine," Tapscott linked to a Foxnews.com article discussing October 23 comments by CDC director Dr. Thomas Friedan. However, in his October 23 comments about the H1N1 vaccine, Friedan stated that vaccine supplies were below the number predicted because the estimates from the vaccine manufactures - presumably the experts in flu vaccine manufacturing - were too high. Friedan stated: "What we have learned more in the last couple of weeks is that not only is the virus unpredictable, but vaccine production is much less predictable than we wish. We are nowhere near where we thought we'd be by now. We are not near where the vaccine manufacturers predicted we would be." [10/23/09]
CDC official: "[S]ome of the manufacturers have let us know that the production of vaccine is likely to be a bit delayed." From an October 17 press briefing by Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases:
It's very difficult to predict exactly how many doses we'll have in the weeks ahead, but we do want to let people know that some of the manufacturers have let us know that the production of vaccine is likely to be a bit delayed in terms of the number of doses they were expecting to have out in future weeks. We wish that we had more vaccine and there is more vaccine coming out every day but it doesn't look like we're going to be able to make those estimates that we had projected for the end of this month. The production estimates are going to be lower by the end of this month but there will be more vaccine coming out regularly. [10/23/09]
Sebelius: We were "relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers ... It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy." Sebelius stated on the October 26 edition of CBS' The Early Show: "What we were doing is relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers, and as soon as we got numbers, we put them out to the public. It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy, that the projections were too high a couple of months ago and we got updated projections as recently as Columbus Day." [10/26/09]
As I have repeatedly said, despite their protests that Democrats are using the H1N1 flu to try to push healthcare reform, the exact opposite is true.
It is people on the right, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and now Andrew Breitbart who are using the real and undeniable H1N1 epidemic to scare people away from healthcare reform.
They are trying to portray the govt as incompetent and therefore untrustworthy to handle healthcare reform.
It is they who are handling this topic in a politically partisan way!
Not "incompetent." Evil...and hijacked by global corporate interests obsessed with eugenics and genocide.
The flu vaccine push has nothing to do with eugenics and genocide.
Really. Go see someone. Fast.
Give BC blogger credit for honesty, however. While his headline is an attack, he does have the integrity to link to this, which in my view undercuts his delay-shows-government-can't-do-anything-right meme.
So these complete and total morons are equating the elected officials who change the laws (health care reform) with those who work in government (those who do not lose their jobs simply because the elected officials change) who are the ones who make the vaccines.
One has absolutely nothing to do with the other!
Only the brain dead will fall for this idiocy!
The Kerry campaign and supporters such as Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California cite reports by the nonprofit Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Government Accountability Office as evidence the Bush administration has been on notice since 2001 that the nation was vulnerable to supply disruption because only Chiron, based in Emeryville, California, and Sanofi-Aventis make flu shots.
So Bush knew about problems for years.
But you want to hold Obama to a much higher standard than what you held Bush to! What a tool.
Obama is, in fact, pulling troops out of Iraq in a plan much similar to what he promised during the campaign.
And he never promised to pull troops out of Afghanistan.
And he is a man of his word.
And the Nobel Peace Prize committee looked at his leadership and his vision and determined that this year, no other person was doing more to inspire the world to become a more peaceful place than Obama. If he's successful in Afghanistan and Iraq, the world will be a much safer place. He's trying the best things he could do for peace, given where the world was and the USA was when he got into office in January!
I will use public campaign financing
Legislation will be visible to the public for 5 days before vote
My administration will have no lobbyists
My administration will be ethical (Geithner)
My admin will be post partisan
I will bring America together, eliminate division
95% of Americans will get a tax cut
I will veto bills with earmarks.
"A man of his word" -- I don't think so.
2. Distortion - Obama never said that he would be able to force Congress to do that - it was his goal, and they HAVE been doing that with most legislation - but it was 3 days, not 5.
3. Distortion - Obama never said that there would be no lobbyists, but he did hire a couple with a couple of waivers, because he realized after getting into office that not hiring any people who have ever lobbied is really hard to fill some jobs.
4. Lie - Obama's administration has been ethical. Geithner's errors were inadvertant, and, unlike uninformed people like you, I understand what has to happen in order for it to be tax fraud, and what Geithner did wasnt' fraud, or anything like it. People make mistakes, and we don't require nor demand saints in office or to work for the President either.
5. Lie - He can't make the Republicans behave in a non-partisan way, but he HAS behaved in a post-partisan way!!!
6. Lie - He never claimed he would be able to get some people's heads out of their butts. For you to suggest that it's HIS failure that others are too partisan is ludicrous.
7. Lie - 95% have already gotten the tax cut, and won't have their taxes raised by Obama. That's the truth. It's your distortion that's not right.
8. He hasn't gotten a bill with earmarks yet. The Financial Stimulus Bill didn't have earmarks. You're too ignorant to know that, apparently. But in any case, he didn't SAY he would veto a bill with earmarks, anyway. He said that he'd limit earmarks, and he'd examine them closely. Not every earmark is bad. Too bad you're so ill-informed to think that they are. In fact, it's ONLY with a local representative that we're going to know about worthy local projects that deserve federal support! I don't expect a Congressman in Texas to know about a worthy project and then submit a proposal about a local need in Ohio.
A man who lies about Obama? That'd be you. I don't just think so, I know so.
Reuters today published a study saying the more educated segment (Democrats) of our population is less likely to vaccinate than the less educated segment (Republicans). So I'm a bit confused on MMfA's attempt to politicize this issue and Beck's commentary which, for once, may be vaguely accurate.
Beck's commentary wasn't accurate. He was trying to foment fear.
And duh, all threads close after 3 days. That thread you mention has been closed since October 10th, so no, it didn't prematurely close, and there's no mystery. It closed more than 2 weeks ago!