Go Breathe Your Own Air

by digby

Oh no. Here comes the heavy hand of government telling everyone what to do again:

In Texas, Byron Steele High School was closed and all its extracurricular activities were canceled “to reduce the risk to students, staff and the community,” said Dr. Sandra Guerra, a regional director for the state health department. She urged students not to hang out together anyway as “that would defeat the purpose.”

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas asked the C.D.C. to send 37,430 doses of Tamiflu.

According to one expert involved in telephone discussions about flu preparedness on Saturday, there was debate among officials about whether to move some of the stockpile closer to Texas and California.

Since Governor Perry wants Texas to secede from the union because of all the onerous taxes and regulations I feel sure he’d agree that Californians should have the stockpile closer to them since they are happy to remain part of the United States.

In fact, all those people who don’t want to pay their taxes and think the federal government is useless should probably figure out how they plan to deal with a possible pandemic by their own libertarian selves. After all, the worst words in the world are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you, right?”

Maybe they could put an ad on Craigslist for “pandemic management needed.”

Update: I hadn’t realized that one of the costs the Republicans ridiculed and ultimately took out of the stimulus bill was money to fight pandemics. Susan Collins made sure it was stripped from the Senate version.

It’s very tempting to say that those states whose leaders refused to fund this should be at the end of the line, but unfortunately it won’t do any good when it comes to public health. You have to make sure the jackasses get treated as well or we all suffer. But I would hope that someone will remind their constituents of their shortsighted partisanship when the time comes.

h/t to bb