Brodner's Cartoon du Jour: Swine Flu Totem

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Tue Jul. 7, 2009 10:18 AM PDT

Apparently the swine flu is all the rage in London. This from Harper's Weekly:

Officials in Britain said that the number of new cases of swine flu in that country was doubling weekly and could reach 100,000 new cases per day by the end of August; Dr. Richard Jarvis, chairman of the British Medical Association's public-health committee, cited reports of people throwing "swine flu parties" to expose themselves to the virus and build their immunity. "I don't think it is a good idea," he said.

Here's my take (from The American Prospect):

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Contributing illustrator Steve Brodner also does artwork for The New Yorker and Harper's.

Comments

Brodner's Cartoon du Jour: Swine Flu Totem

Submitted by Dredd (not verified) on Tue Jul. 7, 2009 11:56 AM PDT.

Beware Brodner, the science police are thinking about you.

Cities ~ Factory Farms

Submitted by Walter Jeffries (not verified) on Wed Jul. 8, 2009 8:58 AM PDT.

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solution

Hmm… Sounds like the description of a city, an office building, a public school, a hospital… teaming with closely packed animals, the human kind, that spread their disease from one to another producing new mutations of viruses and bacteria. A “hot bed of disease” to quote a very old poem. Let’s get the people, and the animals, out of the factories and back on pasture!

British Health Care (or couldn't Care less)

Submitted by Raul (not verified) on Wed Jul. 8, 2009 11:23 AM PDT.

I think the British are forced to be more proactive about their health care than Americans. If the Swine Flu reemerges in the fall, it will be a much stronger strain, maybe even a super strain. Those hit by the a strong strain of the Swine Flu will be hurting, literally, if they have to depend on National Health Care Service taking care of them such as the one the British have (see link and snippets below). Therefore, building an immunity might be a good idea for some.

The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1019/p04s01-woeu.html

British healthcare in crisis despite massive investment

...patients at many health facilities face long waits and uneven quality.

...his [Gordon Brown] government is scrambling to fend off accusations of crisis in the National Health Service following a damning report about hospital infections that critics say is symptomatic of a wider malaise in British healthcare.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson was forced to apologize in Parliament this week after it emerged that at least 90 patients in southeast England died as a result of infections picked up in the hospital.

...safety lapses and overcrowding.

...bleak picture of teeming wards where overworked nurses didn't even help patients to the bathroom.

...experts say the cost and staffing pressures affecting the trust are widespread, and that many other "primary care trusts" that manage local health services are struggling.

"It's the burger-bar style of efficiency – the more you can do with fewer staff the better," he says. "But patient safety seems to come at the bottom of the list.... The Hippocratic oath has gone out of the window."

...waiting times, they are pretty close to the worst in Europe. And outcomes [of treatment] is not high either.

The Nurse of the Year, Justine Whitaker, said she was quitting the National Health Service.

Well, I suppose because

Submitted by Steve Brodner (not verified) on Wed Jul. 8, 2009 6:36 PM PDT.

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Well, I suppose because Britain has bungled her system, that must mean we do nothing here. Our horror stories are worse, much worse. People denied coverage and/ or get personally bankrupted because a family member is sick is very bad. The rest of Europe takes care of its people. The British have been doing it for decades. Seems like a management problem there, not a signal to revert to this Medical Industrial Complex we have here.