have you seen this
NASCAR cooties? Posted: Thursday, October 11, 2007 1:46 PM by Mark Murray
Categories: Congress
From NBC’s Mike Viqueira
What gives with House staffers getting immunizations for hepatitis, diphtheria, and influenza before going to NASCAR races? The issue comes to us courtesy Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC), who wrote to the House Committee on Homeland Security yesterday asking why four of their staffers were immunized before attending a race in his hometown of Concord and in Talledega, Alabama. “I have never heard of immunizations for domestic travel, and as the Representative for Concord, NC, I feel compelled to ask why the heck the committee feels that immunizations are needed to travel to my hometown?” Hayes wrote to committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS).
Thompson responds in a letter that committee staff are often visiting “hospitals, holding areas, and similar locations,” and were in fact doing so “at or near these venues... I believe that the recommendation (not requirement) that our congressional staff receive these same immunizations was sound.” They were immunized against Hepatitis A and B, tetanus, diphtheria, and seasonal influenza, according to Thompson.
Your humble congressional reporter’s e-mail has been inundated this morning with messages from GOP staffers eager to advance the notion that Democrats, who run the committee, are unduly worried about catching something nasty from red-blooded Americans at NASCAR races.
Not so, says a committee spokeswoman. She says that immunizations are standard operating procedure for staffers on these kinds of trips — and as a matter of fact, such forays are planned at the World Series, the Super Bowl, and even Lollapalooza to look into preparedness at mass gatherings. It’s not simply terrorism that they are concerned with at the committee, she explained, but outbreaks of disease and infection.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/10/11/407555.aspx