We don't really need Minister Gary Hunt's unfortunate circumstance
---
with his wife's health--- to confirm that disease control and
prevention expertise and technology is far superior in the USA than in
Trinbago. Nor, too, to tell us that whatever picture of national health
is painted in the USA is far superior to what obtains in Trinbago
---else so many of us who could afford would not flee north to seek
medical attention at the slightest sign of worry, ent?
Thus it was that, thoroughly disgusted with the sudden announcement that "
the elite"
would get first preference when H1N1 vaccine doses start sharing, I
found it prudent to see whether in the latest news from the outside
something other than the virus had mutated to catalyze such a callous
shift.
Sadly, not gladly, I hit paydirt.
The USA federal agency known as the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), on November 20th last, put out a revised report on
the status of H1N1 which shows that there has been a four hundred
percent jump from what had been before reported.
Indeed, the CDC has now concluded that
between April 2009 ---when the first case of Swine Flu was reported---
and
October 2009, some twenty-two million persons have been infected, of
which figure, three thousand, nine hundred have been killed by the
disease!
The CDC-revised figures clearly suggest that Swine Flu, in the
USA, has been increasing at a rate faster than that seen for any type
of influenza since the 1950s.
The new mind-boggling statistics were caused, not by the virus becoming
more, well, um, virulent, rather by the CDC's sudden realization that
its previous methodologies of evaluating H1N1's progress was totaly
wrong, for it was basing its extrapolations, thus its response to the
problem, on laboratory-confirmed cases, even though the CDC itself knew
that most persons who come down with the flu never seek professional
treatment and, even of those that do, not that many get tested to see
what sort of flu they have! Amazing, ent?
(See: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates_2009_h1n1.htm)
Turning inwards to Trinidad and Tobago (TT) then, what can we say of
TT's true state of Swine Flu affairs? Well, seeing as we cannot trust
the local authorities to give us accurate info on anything, heck! to
give us any info at all, it makes sense to judge from what obatins in
the USA to get some insight into what's going down down here in TT,
ent? Makes sense, too, for, always, RES IPSA LOQUITOR.
At the outset I'd mentioned that the quality of healthcare available
and practiced in the USA is far superior to what obtains in TT,
remember? Therefore, in analyzing the TT Swine Flu scenario, one must
factor in that difference, which, for this exercise, I've assessed the
TT healthcare situation to be thirty percent of what exists in the USA.
Hence, from the latest CDC figures, we can conjecture as follows:
Like I said, "RES IPSA LOQUITOR!" Now I understand why the elite feels
they who comprise it have the inherent right to be first in the come-get-yuh-vaccine
line. I hope that also you do and that, sooner, rather than later, you
and I would unite to do something about it.
Meantime, God help us!
