Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Flu Hysteria: Gov’t Owes Us an Explanation

Posted

Advisers to President Barack Obama (D) have just dropped a bombshell: the swine flu may infect half of the U.S. population this year, killing over 90,000 and hospitalizing 1.8 million. These advisers have also recommended a feverish stockpiling of flu vaccinations for over 40 million people and establishing a cabinet member (perhaps the Homeland Security Secretary) as the person responsible for the government’s response to this horrible, earth-shattering pandemic flu.

Part of me, given the earnestness of these recommendations from the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, wants to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it all just doesn’t pass the common sense test; not yet anyway.

I’ve written some over the last several months about the somewhat irrational response to the ‘pandemic’ swine flu that is, by all accounts, less dangerous, less virulent, less deadly, and less worrisome than the regular, annual, seasonal flu. I would be much more likely to believe the President’s science advisers if, for example, they had explained why they thought—against all publicly available evidence—that this flu is particularly dangerous. Imagine if on September 1, 2001, President George W. Bush (R) had taken drastic anti-terror measures, tightening airport security and detaining people, because he thought something bad was going to happen soon. Perhaps it would have been a prudent move on the President’s part, and perhaps it would have prevented the September 11, 2001, attacks . . . but we would have demanded a clear, public explanation before we went along with it.

I do the same now. I demand a clear, public explanation of why the swine flu is worthy of drastic public action, vaccine stockpiling, and fear-mongering about half of the population getting sick. If you can explain your reasoning in plain, believable English, I’ll gladly go right along with the hysteria. In the mean time, I’ll continue to think this is just the mindless fear-mongering it appears to be at face value.

Setting a New Personal Biking Record

Posted

So after yesterday went completely not as planned, today went pretty smoothly. After Mass this morning we had a nice lunch with my parents, and then I went on that nice, long bike ride I’d planned to do yesterday (stupid rain). Originally I planned to do a 40-miler, but after I got 20 miles out from the Route 28 W&OD Trail parking lot I was still feeling pretty good so I just kept going.

All told, when I finally got back to the parking lot, I had been riding for roughly four hours (including a few breaks here and there) and my odometer told me I had gone 56.2 miles.

As far a I know, this is a personal record. Of course, most of the rides I did as a kid (some of which quite long) I don’t really remember the distance, but my fuzzy memory says that the longest I ever did before I started tracking it closely was about 50 miles. I’ve just recently worked up to that kind of range, and have done a couple of 50-milers in the last month or two. I’m going to declare 56.2 to be my new personal single-ride record!

I can probably bump that a hair to an even 60, but not for a week or two. My poor legs need time to recover.

Share to:

Send to:

Posted in: Life

House: Getting Windows, Doors, and Ducts

Posted

house2house1house4house3Before the rain swooped in, Melissa and I made a quick run by the house. Melissa had planned to do an art show today but wasn’t feeling up to it because of a stomach bug, and I was planning a nice, long bike ride but the weather screwed that up . . . so we ran by the house, got some lunch, and then have spent most of the rest of the day catching up on a million neglected to-dos.

Regardless, the house is coming along nicely. The building has most of its windows and doors installed, ducts put in, plumbing and wiring done, and so on. They’re already starting to finish the exterior walls (with brick), though it’s not done yet (and they haven’t gotten to ours). In the pictures you can see the whole building, our ‘Future Home of . . . ’ sign, the front of the house (with our main floor window missing), and the back of the house (with our bedroom window missing).

We are supposedly going to be called to come do a ‘pre-drywall walkthrough’ soon. Fun times!

Health Care: There Is Another Way

Posted

I wrote briefly in April 2006 about a health care proposal put forth by then-Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA). This has always been a challenging issue for me because, contrary to the arguments put forth by many Republicans and Libertarians, I believe that health care is a right. It isn’t a right enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, of course, but it is a moral imperative that society—one way or another—provide a basic level of medical care to all people. Having said that, contrary to the arguments put forth by many Democrats, the U.S. government is incapable of providing health care, or even health insurance, in a cost effective, equitable way. The feds have botched virtually every major initiative they have taken on, and health care will be no different.

But in Massachusetts, Romney—a Republican in liberal Democrat land—put forth a plan that was intended to provide everybody in the state with medical insurance without any kind of government-run system. Many of Massachusetts’s uninsured (about 20 percent) were eligible for the existing Medicare system, but had not enrolled . . . so the state started enrolling them. Another 40 percent of them could afford health insurance, but chose not to . . . so the state started requiring they obtain insurance (although I would leave this part out of my plan, since people have a right to willingly refuse insurance). The rest were in that nether-region where they made too much to qualify for Medicare, but too little to really afford their own insurance . . . they were provided with a state subsidy to allow them to afford health insurance.

And guess what! It worked! Almost everybody in Massachusetts has health insurance now, and about 70 percent of the people of the state are satisfied with the program (now colloquially called ‘RomneyCare’). The government of the state didn’t have to establish a state-run system or spend trillions of dollars to do it either. Some are starting to point to RomneyCare as a possible model for a national health care system that moderate Republicans and Democrats could all agree on. I have some misgivings with RomneyCare, but they are nothing compared to my misgivings about ObamaCare. RomneyCare would be a reasonable point from which to start over on a new national plan.

Begala: My Friend Bob Novak

Posted

Conservative columnist Robert Novak died Tuesday from a brain tumor, about one year after doctors discovered his condition and estimated he had only six months to a year to live. I wrote a bit about Novak’s surprise diagnosis last September, and linked to his own column about it—one of the last columns he published. One of the parts that I found refreshing and touching was how, despite their quite serious political differences, Novak found help and support from the Kennedy family (Senator Ted Kennedy [D-MA] had recently found he suffered from brain cancer as well).

Paul Begala, a liberal commentator who had worked with Novak on CNN, wrote a similarly refreshing and touching commentary yesterday. Begala and Novak were friends, despite their almost polar-opposite political worldviews.

Frankly, I’m no fan of either man as commentators. Both are/were extremists on their respective sides of the political spectrum, and tended to go (in my opinion) too far in arguing their points. Regardless, it is always nice to see the kindness that people can show one another in their times of need. You would not think that Kennedy or Begala would have anything nice to say about or to Novak, but they did. Most likely, had the roles been reversed, Novak would have handled things in the same kind, respectful, loving way.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.