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Daily Freeman Editorial: Full Flu Disclosure
Full Flu Disclosure
Published: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
IT APPARENTLY has been decided by someone in Ulster County that the pandemic spread of a new flu virus, which has been spurring governments and health organizations to feverish action around the globe, is now of no special concern to the public.
As in, ?Don?t worry ? we?re handling it.?
We must have missed that memo.
Both the Ulster County Health Department and the Kingston school district last week took what charitably might be characterized as a father-knows-best response to the second and third confirmed cases of swine flu in Ulster County, one a student in the Kingston school system.
The Health Department confirmed the two new cases, while declining to give any information whatsoever about one of the cases. As for the other case, involving a Kingston district student, well, it was too much for everyone involved to even identify the school involved or grade.
A spokesman for Ulster County Executive Michael Hein passed the buck on the issue of this paucity of public information. The state Health Department, said Vincent Martello, recommends saying only whether an infected person is a child or adult, lest the patient?s privacy be disturbed.
The state Health Department also recommends school districts closely monitor illness, in part through absenteeism. As for the state Education Department, it washes its hands of the matter by saying decisions about whether schools should continue to operate or close should be made by local districts in consultation with local health officials.
In effect, a school could have one, five, 15 or 100 cases of swine flu and you, as a parent, wouldn?t know it until such time as the authorities that be decide amongst themselves that the illness has reached some sort of critical mass demanding action. Until that time, the whole thing is, by policy, sub rosa as a matter of inviolate individual privacy.
With all due respect to privacy, which we all value, that?s just screwy.
In effect, this cluster-fluence of policies and recommendations means this: The school district alone is acting as the guardian of your child?s health with regard to an illness not terribly well understood yet by the medical world. It is doing so by monitoring how many cases a particular school gets before deciding ? presumably in private consultation with health agencies ? whether to close a given school.
Which leads to this question: Is my child or your child required to become part of a statistically significant number of sick students before all other parents are notified? By all appearances, the answer is, yes, quite possibly.
That?s an approach designed, at best, to protect the herd, at the expense of individuals. All done in the name of privacy. Many parents undoubtedly would like the option of keeping their children home if a school is known to have cases, especially if their children have ?underlying conditions? that make them mortally vulnerable to swine flu. And if you think that has to be something rare like congenital heart problems, think again. The death of a 9-year-old swine flu victim in Florida last week was attributed to the ?underlying condition? of asthma. There?s a clear contradiction here. Public health authorities and governments are scrambling to plan for the contingency that the H1N1 flu virus will prove itself a scourge. A good part of that plan ? perhaps even the better part of that preparation ? will assume the active cooperation of the public. But it is doubtful, at best, that such cooperation will be easily enlisted by civic institutions that have made a practice of throttling information and freezing out the public.
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles...4315535217.txt
Published: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
IT APPARENTLY has been decided by someone in Ulster County that the pandemic spread of a new flu virus, which has been spurring governments and health organizations to feverish action around the globe, is now of no special concern to the public.
As in, ?Don?t worry ? we?re handling it.?
We must have missed that memo.
Both the Ulster County Health Department and the Kingston school district last week took what charitably might be characterized as a father-knows-best response to the second and third confirmed cases of swine flu in Ulster County, one a student in the Kingston school system.
The Health Department confirmed the two new cases, while declining to give any information whatsoever about one of the cases. As for the other case, involving a Kingston district student, well, it was too much for everyone involved to even identify the school involved or grade.
A spokesman for Ulster County Executive Michael Hein passed the buck on the issue of this paucity of public information. The state Health Department, said Vincent Martello, recommends saying only whether an infected person is a child or adult, lest the patient?s privacy be disturbed.
The state Health Department also recommends school districts closely monitor illness, in part through absenteeism. As for the state Education Department, it washes its hands of the matter by saying decisions about whether schools should continue to operate or close should be made by local districts in consultation with local health officials.
In effect, a school could have one, five, 15 or 100 cases of swine flu and you, as a parent, wouldn?t know it until such time as the authorities that be decide amongst themselves that the illness has reached some sort of critical mass demanding action. Until that time, the whole thing is, by policy, sub rosa as a matter of inviolate individual privacy.
With all due respect to privacy, which we all value, that?s just screwy.
In effect, this cluster-fluence of policies and recommendations means this: The school district alone is acting as the guardian of your child?s health with regard to an illness not terribly well understood yet by the medical world. It is doing so by monitoring how many cases a particular school gets before deciding ? presumably in private consultation with health agencies ? whether to close a given school.
Which leads to this question: Is my child or your child required to become part of a statistically significant number of sick students before all other parents are notified? By all appearances, the answer is, yes, quite possibly.
That?s an approach designed, at best, to protect the herd, at the expense of individuals. All done in the name of privacy. Many parents undoubtedly would like the option of keeping their children home if a school is known to have cases, especially if their children have ?underlying conditions? that make them mortally vulnerable to swine flu. And if you think that has to be something rare like congenital heart problems, think again. The death of a 9-year-old swine flu victim in Florida last week was attributed to the ?underlying condition? of asthma. There?s a clear contradiction here. Public health authorities and governments are scrambling to plan for the contingency that the H1N1 flu virus will prove itself a scourge. A good part of that plan ? perhaps even the better part of that preparation ? will assume the active cooperation of the public. But it is doubtful, at best, that such cooperation will be easily enlisted by civic institutions that have made a practice of throttling information and freezing out the public.
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles...4315535217.txt
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