The problem is, I think our officials are basically saying nobody here is seriously ill yet, so it must just be Mexico.
Maybe true, but it could get worse. It could be substandard health clinics down south is why they are dying and we aren’t. But, it may be not. Why wait?
People keep saying that...what's concerning to me--ya shouldn't need clinics for the flu. I get the flu nearly every year if I don't get a flu shot, never had to go to the hospital. So unless you are in a high risk group, the flu should really only knock you on your ass for a week.
Even as Mexican officials urged those with flu symptoms to seek medical help, some complained of being turned away.
In Toluca, a city west of the capital, one family said health authorities refused to treat a relative Sunday who had full-blown flu symptoms and could barely stand. The man, 31-year-old truck driver Elias Camacho, was even ordered out of a government ambulance, his father-in-law told The Associated Press.
Paramedics complained that Camacho -- who had a fever, was coughing and had body aches -- was contagious, Jorge Martinez Cruz said.
Family members took him by taxi to a public hospital, but a doctor there denied Camacho was sick and told the trio to leave, Martinez said.
"The government told us that if we have these symptoms, we should go to these places, but look how they treat us," Martinez said. Camacho was finally admitted to the hospital -- and placed in an area marked "restricted" -- after a doctor at a private clinic notified state health authorities, Martinez said.
Jose Isaac Cepeda, who has had fever, diarrhea and joint pains since Friday, said he was turned away from two hospitals -- the first because he isn't registered in the public health system, and the second "because they say they're too busy."
Indeed. If the mortality rate is really 6% or higher, we really ought to take it serious. Other countries are. It's just the U.S. with it's PC attitudes, that's thinking closing the border is worse than protecting it's citizens.