Two Newspaper Articles on Swine Flu

There’s a pair of newspaper articles that illustrate points I’ve been making around here beautifully. Translated from the Mexican journal, Excelsior, Leo Zuckermann wonders “Why are People Dying in Mexico, But Not the U.S.? ”:

When I get a fever in Mexico, I telephone my doctor. He’s a friend who knows me perfectly. He asks me about my symptoms, makes an initial diagnosis and usually issues me a medical prescription over the phone. He only asks me to come see him if he thinks my condition is very serious. I don’t even go to a pharmacy to buy my medication. I call them and they send it to me at my home without even asking for the prescription.

[…]

This type of treatment is unthinkable in the United States. When I had a fever there, I called my doctor. I usually couldn’t find him and so my phone call was answered by the doctor on call. I told him my symptoms and all he would tell me was to come to the clinic the next day or, if I felt really bad, to go to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. He never gave me a diagnosis over the phone; much less issue me a prescription.

This isn’t because it isn’t allowed. For the most part, it’s because doctors in the United States live in constant terror.

[…]

Here, I believe, is the answer. In Mexico, only the most serious cases reach a doctor and, ultimately, the hospital. These are people who have been sick for a long time and don’t respond to the drugs they’ve been taking. In this epidemic, I would imagine that those who actually see a doctor are in an advanced stage of the illness. And since anti-viral medications work only if influenza is detected in its initial stages, many of these patients end up dead. That doesn’t happen in the United States, where, for the systemic reasons I have described, the less serious cases are immediately detected.

When stripped of the inflammatory and, frankly, absurd rhetoric, this is quite right. That’s how moral hazard works. But the anti-American rhetoric is an integral part of the article. Hat tip: The Moderate Voice

In the other, also linked to by The Moderate Voice, Abed al Nasser, writing in the Algerian newspaper Echourouq al-Yawm, blames the swine flu outbreak on the United States:

Just as the United States blamed Africans for AIDS and Muslims for “terrorism,” it now blames its neighboring state of Mexico for swine flu. So as Mexico counts its dead and tends to its sick, the United States tells the world that swine flu began in Mexico, thus conveying the message that the disease began there and ends in the land of the Americans, who are busy curing humanity’s illnesses and ridding the world of its psychological, ideological, physical, environmental and political diseases. This allows them to enter safe countries where they are welcomed with open arms and colonize them without spending a dollar or shedding a drop of sweat or blood.

For America, all is permitted in the pursuit of its goals. It turns nothings into somethings and with the full assistance of the world, uses the result as a stepping stone for achieving its goals.

Clearly, this is lunacy. Magical thinking. But note how the author immediately seizes on this outbreak to ride his hobby, demonizing the United States. It’s a reflex.