I work with a program that provides services to indigent elderly in Kentucky. Mostly in rural Kentucky. Now, by nature, indigent elderly are not the healthiest population. As such, we’ve been very prone to being exposed to every infectious disease known to man. You name it, we deal with it. AIDS, flus, TB. If a human can pass it, we’ll get it. Because of that we’ve had to have a pretty strict policy regarding infectious diseases through the years. Right now it goes something like this:
It is the policy of ******** that an employee who has contracted an infectious disease will not provide any client services until they present a doctor’s statement assuring they are no longer contagious.
Pretty strict if you ask me. Well, the state doesn’t think so. They feel we need to update our policy t reflect the impact of H1N1. It’s that important. I’m kinda balking on this for a few reasons.
- For starters, I don’t see how removing someone from the work place can be improved upon in regards to addressing an infectious disease. This does a lot to deter the spread of the disease.
- If they want to work, they have to see a doctor. I don’t see how you can improve on forcing your staff to seek medical attention. This helps deter the spread of the disease.
- There is an expense incurred in re-writing, re-publishing, and re-training staff in regards to addressing the flu when the procedures will be exactly the same. About the only thing we would be doing is telling the staff H1N1 is an infectious disease. I’m gonna bet they already know that. Since we deal with a fixed funding amount, this simply means our clients will get fewer services for absolutely no benefit.
- Our guidelines regarding protecting our staff were adjusted to reflect the impact of AIDS. AIDS is a lot more dangerous.
- And the kicker for me, the policy we use was originally written in the late 80′s due to a rather virulent flu outbreak. Yup, it was a flu. What’s even more annoying is that flu outbreak was the swine flu. Exactly what it is they’re worrying about now.
This folks, is what people who are demanding public health care want. They’re saying it’s not, but it is. Someone at the federal level decided everyone at the state level needed to specifically address H1N1 because it’s so very special. It’s not good enough right now to protect everyone from ALL contagious diseases, it just has to be that one very special strain of the flu. Now, private industry tends to look at things a lot differently. They wouldn’t be at all concerned about H1N1 IF they knew they already had procedures in place to deal with it. The state knows they had procedures in place, but those procedures didn’t pander to the disease of the day, even if it was the disease of 20 years ago.
This is a huge waste of time and waste of money to make people less safe. That’s your public option at work.
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JunLee Arandia on 01.02.2010
My brother got infected with H1N1 or Swine Flu in Mexico. He got a mild fever and luckily he did not die.
| Acne Treatments Asia on 01.05.2010
If you look at the pandemic of 1977, when H1N1 or Swine Flu re-emerged after a 20 year absence, there is no shift in age-related mortality pattern. The 1977 “pandemic” is, of course, not considered a true pandemic by experts today, for reasons that are not entierely consistent. It certainly was an antigenic shift and not an antigenic drift. As far as I have been able to follow the current events, the most significant factor seems to have been that most people, who were severely affected, were people with other medical conditions.
Roy on 02.02.2010
I think h1n1 was simply a conspiracy controlled the government. Many of others also believe that it was ment to eradicate people, but I believe it was just hyped by the media by the international companies and coporations who were the ones that sold the vaccinations to the various governments. Do you guys agree??
Moonage on 02.03.2010
Actually Roy, to some degree, you’re definitely right. The problem is whenever something is singled out by the US government, a whole bunch of money flows with it. Therefore, everyone relying on that money feels a need to pander to whatever it is. That in turn creates a lot of buzz. That buzz in turn creates more demand regarding the topic. That in turn provides documentation and numbers to support the original assumption. Global warming is the epitome of that. With very little to no verifiable evidence, entire governments, including my own, are will to totally destroy our economies. There was never any evidence that H1N1 was actually a lethal pandemic. Once the word pandemic got out, everyone just assumed it was. Now that it has run a usual flu pattern and most everyone’s either had it or been exposed, people realize it’s not what they thought someone else told them it was and it has become pretty well forgotten.