A Teachable Moment

Jules Crittenden explains the Swine Flu panic to his son:

I told him swine flu is like Hurricane Katrina. It’s coming, and it’s going to do what it’s going to do. Big force of nature. Might be bad, might not be so bad. Dunno yet. But when it’s over, everyone is going to want to know whether the president did everything he could to limit the damage. Deservedly or not, Bush got whacked over that. People are already starting to talk about swine flu as Obama’s Katrina.

And, given the drastic shortfall and delay in vaccine preparation and distribution, it isn’t looking good for him if this thing gets bad. Especially since, as the White House flack notes above, “The H1N1 is moving rapidly, as expected.”

Although … I didn’t get into this with the kid … key words such as “federal government’s ambitious inoculation campaign” in that last Washington Post graph above are little clues that suggest there’s media scrutiny about political responsibility, and then there’s media scrutiny about political responsibility. And not all media scrutiny about political responsibility is equal.

More news and links.

NYT: Swine flu widespread in 46 states as vaccinations lag.

Another Black Conservative:

I know I may catch hell for saying this, but I just cannot get all worked up about H1N1. When I look at the numbers, especially in light of the fact that there are 300 million of us, I just don’t see what all the panic is about.
…
Quite frankly, I have found the handling of H1N1 to be overkill from day one. It isn’t like people are dropping like flies all over the place.

And to the best of my knowledge, unlike Katrina and Hurricane Gustav in 2008, there aren’t any prominent Republicans or conservatives rooting for the Swine Flu, either: