A little bit of alarmism about the Swine Flu outbreak
Filled with my customary joie de vivre, I was ranting earlier about quite how far down the vaccination pecking order middle aged men will come, and while I have not been able to lay hands on the UK's gold list, I have found the American one, and I do not doubt that the UK's plans will be similar, bar I imagine, that the Forces will get the, cough, dirty end of the stick as per usual. Always bearing in mind that there are, if memory serves, only about 30 odd million doses available.
So, in descending order of how much lives are worth preserving:
The A-list
Homeland & National Security
- Deployed and mission critical personnel
- Public health personnel
- Inpatient health care providers
- Outpatient and home health care providers
- Health care providers in long-term care facilities
- Emergency Medical Services personnel
- Law enforcement personnel
- Fire services personnel
- Manufacturers of pandemic vaccine, antiviral drugs, and other key pandemic response materials
- Key government leaders (And you can bet your bottom dollar that 'key' will be defined ever so widely)
- Pregnant women
- Infants and toddlers, 6 – 35 months old
Probably fairly reasonable, if truth be told.
The B-list
Homeland & National Security
- Essential support and sustainment personnel
- Intelligence services
- Border protection personnel
- National Guard personnel (who are not already included in Level A)
- Other domestic national security personnel
- Community support services and emergency management personnel
- Energy sector personnel (electricity and natural gas)
- Communications personnel (telephony and IT)
- Water sector personnel (potable and waste water)
- Government personnel (surprise, surprise)
- Household contacts of infants under 6 months old
- Children 3 – 18 years old with high-risk medical conditions
- Children 3 – 18 years old without high-risk medical conditions
The C-list
Homeland & National Security
- Remaining active duty military and essential support personnel
- Other important health care personnel
- Transportation sector personnel
- Food and agriculture sector personnel
- Banking and finance sector personnel
- Pharmaceutical sector personnel
- Chemical sector personnel
- Oil sector personnel
- Postal and shipping sector personnel
- Other important government personnel
- High risk persons 19 – 64 years old
- Persons 65 years and older
The D-list
- Healthy adults, 19 – 64 years old, not included in other categories
Feeeling re-assured?
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 4:30 pm.
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So this will be the first epidemic in history to affect only taxpayers.
What are they going to do when the whole of the productive sector of the economy has died?
Brian, follower of Deornoth
Hey, I'm half way down the B-List! I might get to live!
Yah-boo-sucks to the rest of you. I'm alright Jack.
Brian - I fear that the economy might take a while to recover if those are the last men and women standing.
Geoff - Lucky old you. As a merry freelancer in PR etc, I was always going to be rated as little more than potential dog food on these measures.
Broon's A List:
Politicians and their hangers-on
The Client State
All other Labour Voters
Broon's Z List:
Everybody else
Given that the State has stock of vaccines for about half the population, anyone not on the A list won't be getting any.
Fortunately the whole thing is just a scare anyway. I am as worried as I was by AIDS, Bird Flu, SARS, CJD, Global Warming, the Millennium Bug, and all the rest of it. Yawn.
Anon - yup, that sounds like a fairly accurate précis. I do not think that this is the apocalypse either.
The irony, of course (or perhaps that should be one of rather a lot of ironies) is that this particular strain of flu seems to have a preference for middle-aged peeps instead of the usual suspects - the young and the old.
Oh, by the way - anyone noticed the meteorite appearing over the horizon....? We're doomed, I tell you, doomed.... And then there's that megavolcano in Yellowstone which is overdue (cont. p94)
Brian/Anon: indeed.
I used to fantasise about this back in the Cold War days. I imagined nuclear armageddon, during which all the parasites and drones would retreat into their specially-prepared bunkers; once the war was over they would emerge, fire up their laptops, and start sending out tax demands.
And NOTHING would happen: they'd need to go out and make a living themselves.
It's almost worth a pandemic just to see (or imagine, more likely) the looks on their faces. Ohmigod, we've got to work!
bwa ha ha.
A friend of mine used to swear blind that his father was a key holder for the government bunker in Kelvedon Hatch (since immortalised in a thousand viral e-mails of an Essex road sign saying 'secret nuclear bunker') and his task was to unlock the bunker for the 'great and good' and then to go away and perish in the forthcoming nuclear war.
True story, or so mate told me.
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