You’re not kidding. The only consolation is that their daughter never really suffered.
When I go, I’d like to go that quickly.
Often little ones get unexplained fevers. This is scary.
I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandpa did, not screaming in terror like the passengers in his car...
“Mixed Marks for Swine Flu Updates
Study finds wide variations in Web reports by states and municipalities”
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/07/07/mixed-marks-for-swine-flu-updates.html
..”After the U.S. government declared a public health emergency in April, 46 of 50 state health departments posted some information about the H1N1 outbreak within 24 hours of the federal announcement, according to Rand Corp. researchers.” [So, 4 states did not!]
“However, only a third of the 153 local health departments included in the study posted information on their Web sites within 24 hours of the federal announcement.
The researchers also found wide differences in performance among local health departments in the five states with
confirmed swine flu cases at the start of the outbreak — California, Kansas, New York, Ohio and Texas.
About 73 percent of counties in California quickly provided some information on their Web sites, compared with
18 percent of counties in Texas and
eight percent of counties in Kansas.
The study also found that content posted by most state health departments was of high quality.
Forty-three of 47 state health departments provided information about how people could protect themselves or their family,
36 of 47 offered information about when to seek treatment and”
(only) “27 of 47 explained who should take antiviral drugs.
Among the other findings:
30 states provided information for health-care providers, with 14 posting their own information and 16 linking to information posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just over half of state health departments posted a news release, and nine provided information in languages other than English.
Of the 34 percent of local health departments that posted information on their Web site within 24 hours of the federal announcement of a public health emergency,
54 percent did this by linking to the CDC or their state health department Web site.
“We found that the capability to conduct basic crisis and emergency risk communication is quite good at the state level, but there remains significant variation at the local level”...
So, 66% of local health departments did not post information within 24 hours of a National Public Health Emergency announcement...
Better if they had polled the US public: to see whoever read the page for individuals on pandemciflu.gov
that’s been up since Oct.2005 and then ask local and state officials why so mum on Preparedness
Yes. When we’re young, we don’t want to go, but when we’re more mature, we want to go suddenly. Scary words: lingering illness. Ugh.