Quick Fact: Hannity used insufficient H1N1 vaccine supply - which he blamed on gov't - to attack health reform
Sean Hannity blamed the H1N1 vaccine shortage on the government and suggested that the shortage is indicative of the government's ability to reform health care.
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From the November 11 edition of Hannity:
HANNITY: There are some parents that don't want to vaccinate their kids. Which by the way, Deirdre Imus, if you're watching, fine, I understand. She excoriated me for suggesting that people might want to get it. But if people do want it, it's not available, because the government didn't produce enough of it. Is this the same government that now has the capacity to take over health care?
Fact: CDC, Sebelius say private sector manufacturers' projections of available vaccines were too high.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Thomas Friedan said that vaccine supplies were below the number predicted because the estimates from the private sector vaccine manufacturers -- 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." And Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has called the projections the government received from the manufacturers "overly rosy."
Clinton tried to kill OBL using cruise missiles. The Bush admin was advised that OBL and Al Quaida were perhaps the greatest threat to the US. The Bushies chose to ignore these warnings; they *knew* it was Saddam Hussein.
That's right, they didn't.
Obama is not responsible for vaccine shortages. His underlings have worked great on this issue - they've distributed the vaccine we've had well - it's been local govts that have sometimes given it out poorly. They've asked for multi-dose vials like they should have, and they put orders in as soon as possible. They've kept us informed. Obama declared it a national emergency to remove roadblockst that might impede delivery of care in the future - he proactively did that. They informed the citizenry of the risks and why people should get vaccinated - that's one of the biggest reasons why we're almost out of seasonal flu vaccines, because many people now understand how important it is for their own health and for the health of people around them to get immunized.
Dave, you don't have a leg to stand on - this false blame isn't the same as the legit blame Bush deserves!
But Dell, even if W did make fighting terrorism his number 1 policy, you guys would be chastising him for not making domestic policy, ie healthcare his number 1 policy. The guy couldn't win with the left, so as much as I hated his spending practices, he did after 9/11 take a stronger stand against terrorism than BO is doing today.
The distinction was who protected us, or failed to protect us, from 9/11.
Halliburton failing to protect the oil fields or endangering our troops has nothing to do with 9/11 - those errors and omissions by Halliburton happened years after 9/11.
Halliburton did mess up, that's undeniable. They had responsibilities they didn't live up to. Obama can't be expected to have built a vaccine manufacturing plant since he's gotten in office 10 months ago. It's manufacturing issues that are the problem here with the insufficient supply, remember.
Like I said, you don't have a leg to stand on, Dave.
OK, now who's reading comprehension skills are lacking? By your own admission, Halliburton screwed up. A private sector company Bush relied on in regards to 9/11. That was the question put to me. I've stated that. So now it appears that you are arguing for the sake of arguing. No where did I state that Halliburton was in charge of keeping us safe from terrorists, as I believe the feds have that task locked up. But blaming BO for vaccines when he's only been in office for a few months makes about as much sense as blaming W for the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
This was never a question Pete never asked, Dell. Read before you post.
"If you can equate these two events, I'm sure you can tell me which private sector companies that Bush relied on that failed in regard to 9/11 and Katrina."
You can't "protect" anyone from an event that has already happened. The stuff that Halliburton did after 9/11 didn't protect us from 9/11. If Bush relied upon Halliburton WRT 9/11, and they failed him, it would be WRT to them protecting us from 9/11.
After you typed this, apparently you realized that it didn't quite work, didn't you?
See, the analogy was that Hannity is blaming President Obama for a failure here, when in fact he hasn't failed at all. But Bush did fail WRT to protecting us from 9/11, and Halliburton has no responsibility for that - they came after 9/11.
I explained why Bush does deserve some blame for 9/11. And Obama deserves no blame for the H1N1 vaccine shortage.
No one blamed him for Hurricane Katrina, it was an act of God. But the administration did cut funding for the levees, several times.
The one thing the left blames him for is his initial response to the Gulf Coast. While Americans were drowning in their homes, he was at John McCain's birthday posing with a guitar.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.asp
The rate of growth of a new virus in eggs is beyond control of even the vaccine manufacturers. However, to their best knowledge, the manufacturers provided projections to the gvt, which the gvt then relayed to the people. By your account of failure, the gvt was to have known, before the fact, of this quirkiness in vaccine production? Absurd.
It's not a government responsibility, at this time, to manufacture vaccine. It's private industry that does it. But somehow, Hannity blames the govt? How exactly does that calculus work in his head? And how can he suggest that the if only the govt wasn't inept things would be better when that doesn't square at all with his desire to have these kinds of things out of the hands of the government?
Pres George W Bush can legitimately be blamed for failing to make fighting terrorism his number one priority. It's even more egregious of an error because he was told by Pres Clinton that he should do that, and from all appearances, the reason he DIDN'T make it a high priority was because a Democratic President TOLD him to do it! That's a suckass reason to refuse to make it a high priority.
Then he didn't pay sufficient attention to the "hair on fire" warnings he got for months before 9/11, and it's fair to blame him for that.
The Federal Govt should have been planning for days before Katrina struck and the dikes (not dykes) failed for a Category 5 storm. Better to be over-prepared then underprepared, like they were. It's not fair to claim that the LA Gov and the NOLA mayor should have done more - for catastrophes like this, it has to be the Feds and FEMA who step up, but they were slow. That was Bush's fault. The failure of the dikes was only a little bit his fault, but that's not why Bush gets blamed here. He doesn't generally and mostly get blame for the dikes - he gets blamed for the slow rescue efforts.
So no, you can't fairly blame Obama for vaccine shortages that are due to manufacturing problems. They aren't his fault at all!
All the vaccine we're getting is coming from manufacturing facilities in other countries, and guess what? Those factories typically will give priority to their own countries for the vaccines. We're not far down the list, and they don't completely supply their own nation before they give us some, but they do favor their own countrymen - we would demand the same if there was a factory here in the USA!
There are plans to build a new vaccine manufacturing facility in the USA - the plans were submitted in early January, 2009, by Bush's administration. But it should have been done sooner. So Bush is responsible for that delayed initiative, and Obama is not, and the govt is not at fault for an insufficient vaccine supply.
And it has nothing to do with healthcare reform.
But as I said two months ago, the reason that the right (Rush, Sean, etc) were making a big deal out of the H1N1 flu was because they wanted to portray the govt as incompetent to put the fear of god into people about HCR! That's the only reason Beck and Hannity have hosted flu fearmongerers on their shows. It's not because they're stupid enough to believe them - it's that they know their viewers are stupid enough to be led by their noses to fear HCR because they're told that they might need to fear inept govt running of the H1N1 vaccination.