This week President Obama declared a national emergency in dealing with H1N1.
Obama declares Flu Emergency
President Obama has declared H1N1 swine flu a national emergency, clearing the way for his health chief to give hospitals wider leeway in how they handle a possible surge of new patients, administration officials said Saturday.
The president granted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the power to lift some federal regulations for medical providers, including allowing hospitals to set up off-site facilities to increase the number of available beds and protect patients who are not infected.
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he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that the flu was spreading widely in at least 46 states and had already caused the hospitalization of at least 20,000 Americans. More than 1,000 deaths have been attributed to the virus and more than 2,400 additional deaths were probably associated with it, officials said.
GET THIS 3400 americans are dead, this is as big as 9/11 and growing.
But when Democrats wanted to prepare for this? The GOP Fought it.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...
The liberal blogosphere has been percolating this morning with criticism of Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on HSGAC, for having helped to strip close to $900 million for pandemic influenza preparedness from the economic stimulus package back in February. That bill passed with the crucial support of Collins and just two other Republicans after a handful of controversial or arguably non-stimulative items were removed, including the pandemic funding.
"Everybody in the room is concerned about a pandemic flu," Collins said at the time, referring to the stimulus negotiations. "But does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No, we should not."
Every person who died of the Swine Flue should have their names read on the floor of the senate
and the GOP senators who voted against flu preparations should have their offices picketed
with the families of the dead.