The Continuum Is The Goal

While Obama tries to push through a reform bill on health care, it seems that there is an urgent health issue that is not being adequately addressed:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The H1N1 flu virus could cause up to 90,000 U.S. deaths, mainly among children and young adults, if it resurges this fall as expected, according to a report released Monday by a presidential advisory panel...

And that apparently is on top of:

Up to 40,000 U.S. deaths are linked to seasonal flu each year, with most of the fatalities occurring among people over 65...

Unfortunately:

... the H1N1 vaccine isn't expected to be available until mid-October, and even then it will take several weeks for vaccinated individuals to develop immunity, the report says. The potential "mismatch in timing" could significantly diminish the usefulness of the H1N1 vaccine, the report says.

So what does the report recommend?

Speed up the production of the H1N1 vaccine and have an initial batch - enough to vaccinate up to 40 million people, especially those who are at risk of serious disease - by mid-September...

One can only wonder why it takes a report by a presidential advisory panel to come up with a recommendation as obvious as this? Why hasn't this been done already? Perhaps the answer is hidden in the words of Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:

...the government's preparation and guidance for the public was based on the need to strike a balance "on a continuum of being paralyzed with fear versus complacency."

What type of continuum is that? Typically there would be opposites at the two ends of a continuum. For example you could have a continuum from bad to good. In this case, rather ironically, the Health and Human Services Secretary is offering a continuum from bad to bad, from static to static.

So perhaps the continuum is the goal. Perhaps it is all about having the government and the general public both paralyzed, either with fear or with complacency.