Day: April 3, 2006

Hope I Get Lucky in the Pandemic Lottery

Buck Banks

Vaccination vascillation: Lenny Bruce used to have a line he would scream out in the middle of his act: “We’re all gonna die!” While the essential truth of that statement hasn’t changed, if the avian flu pandemic becomes a reality, some — scratch that — a lot of us are going to die sooner than a few others.

The National Journal interviewed Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Health and Human Services Department, about the nation’s vaccine supply. Overall, the news ain’t good.

According to Gellin, we can’t make enough vaccine right now to combat an avian-flu pandemic:

Because a pandemic will be caused by a virus that we’ve not experienced before, a pandemic vaccine is likely to be a much higher dose to achieve the immune response needed for protection. In studies that [the National Institutes of Health] conducted last year, we were sobered to learn that the vaccine dose was six times higher than what is in our seasonal flu shot and that two doses were required.

‘At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year.’ — Dr. Bruce Gellin

We estimate that if we were to ask Sanofi to dedicate their facilities entirely to H5N1 vaccine, they could produce approximately 30 million to 40 million doses of H5N1 vaccine in a year. At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year. Of course, this would also mean that the company would have to stop making next year’s flu vaccine in order to do this.

So how do we decide who gets the 15-20 million doses in the event the pandemic starts whipping up on us? Well, if it happens under the current president’s administration, poor people and people of color can forget it. Ditto old folks, gays and illegal immigrants. Here’s my prediction of how the flow chart of who would get the vaccine and in what order might look like:

1. First responders and all medical personnel
2. First family (extended), cabinet members and West Wing retainers
3. Four members of the Supreme Court
4. Most of the Senate
5. A little over half of the House of Representatives
6. White House press corps
7. “Wall Street Journal” Washington Bureau
8. All employees of Fox News Network, select CNN anchors and Bob Woodward
9. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell
10. Jackie Mason and Dennis Miller
11. Tony Blair and Gerald Ford
12. Straight military personnel deployed in Iraq

Have an idea of who else would be on the list? Leave us a comment!

The Arnold Show: Why Mavericks Cannot Govern

Jon Ponder

The governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger here in California — like that of Hulk Hogan, er, Jesse Ventura in Minnesota — is more proof that political careers based solely on the whimsy of egomaniacs are generally doomed to failure:

“Haven’t you been listening to me? In Hollywood, I would know how to deal with this. I would bring someone in from the outside to get it done. Do I have to do that here?”
— Gov. Schwarzenegger

So far, a durable governing coalition has eluded him. Schwarzenegger has chalked up many of his troubles in office to the power of special interests and legislators resistant to reform. But insiders say his policy setbacks and slide in the polls may also owe to stubbornness, a taste for flashy Hollywood-style — but politically unrealistic — moves and a naivete about politics in general.

What is not a surprise, of course, is that the movie star turned governor is a diva. When his former chief of staff, Patricia Clarey, tried to disusaude him from pursing the disastrous special election last year, he barked:

“Haven’t you been listening to me?” Schwarzenegger said, according to one person who was present. “In Hollywood, I would know how to deal with this. I would bring someone in from the outside to get it done. Do I have to do that here?”

Of course, after the special election failed resoundingly, he still blamed Clarey:

He wasn’t always nice about it. On a post-election trip to China, the governor left Clarey to commercial flights and press buses while his personal financial advisor traveled as a member of his inner circle, flying on Schwarzenegger’s jet and dining with him and [Schwarzenegger’s wife, former journalist Maria] Shriver.

Schwarzenegger complained privately that he didn’t like “hanging with” Clarey, and criticized her in front of colleagues. Other aides would join him for lunch; she wasn’t invited. In a final rebuke, Schwarzenegger replaced the Republican Clarey with a Democrat.

Governor, I beseech you: Resign now. You can be back on the set of “Terminator 4” or whatever on January 2, 2007. It’s a win-win-win for you, the Democratic majority in the state and its citizenry.

Another Rove Error: Frist Flames Out

Jon Ponder

Kittens’ karma: Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee was appointed to Majority Leader of the Senate by White House political director Karl Rove in 2003, after Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi made a racist remark.

“I hear he was a pretty good surgeon,” a Republican Senator said last week when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader.

The appointment of Frist (who was, of course, “elected” by a majority of Republican senators who knew that defying Rove would be political suicide) was a move to put a reliable White House stooge in charge of the Senate.

Now Frist’s leadership is going down in flames, but, so far, hardly anyone is connecting the dots between Frist’s incompetence and the Bush’s “Boy Genius” who engineered his accession:

Frist, once esteemed as a citizen-politician, a heart- and lung-transplant surgeon who spent part of each year donating his services in the most desperate parts of Africa, has transformed himself into the ultimate political opportunist. His moves—like last week’s ludicrous attempt to hijack the Senate’s immigration debate and move it in a punitive, populist direction—have been so clunky that he has lost the respect of his colleagues, especially Republicans. (The Democrats are thrilled by his ineptitude.) “I hear he was a pretty good surgeon,” a Republican Senator said last week when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader.

Next up, watch the wheels will come off Dr. Frists’s quixotic bid for the presidency:

Frist will leave the Senate at the end of the year and start his presidential campaign. “He’ll disappear,” said a Republican consultant. “He’s not built for heavy weather. He’s just not an instinctive politician. And when you’re a light candidate, every maneuver seems naked and tactical. With Frist, it’s been college Republican sort of stuff.”