- Jun 6, 2007
- 852
- 483
- 910
Congress and the President are out in left field on this new Covid legislation, I think they're in talks to pass a ten billion dollar bill. Their whole approach to the Covid problem is completely off the mark and has not really progressed since 2020. The vaccines and the therapeutics developed for this disease should change the whole government's approach to the problem. We're at the stage now that for the most part the people that are dying from the disease have a serious comorbidity or a serious health problem which compounds the health problems created when such a person catches Covid 19, it is fair to say that today for the most part ordinary healthy people aren't dying from this disease. Therefore, the government needs to change its policy; there is no need today for the government to be paying for the vaccination of the American public as a whole or purchasing hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines and distributing it to pharmacies, hospitals and such to administer the vaccine. At this juncture if the U.S. government wants to buy ten to thirty million doses of the vaccine to distribute it to public health clinics to administer the vaccine to those on Medicaid or are poor and uninsured fine, good idea these people have no other real means to get vaccinated. But in the current times the U.S. governments view should be that the Covid19 vaccine and its boosters falls within the parameters of preventive care and so pursuant to the Affordable Care Act mandate on preventive care it should be free. Insurance companies should be looking at this situation that if a person gets the Covid vaccine or booster they are less likely to end up in the hospital if they get Covid 19 and so we are saving the much larger expense of hospital stays so we don't mind paying the much lower expense of administering vaccines.
The one thing that Federal government officials should be doing and they should be getting the full cooperation of the pharmaceutical companies on this matter. Is they should figure out how many vaccine shots need to be produced for the American population for the year and this is said in the light that ordinary Americans are going to begin to revolt against these vaccines or a more accurate terminology is these booster shots they are asking themselves how much longer is this going to go on I don't like this system where one has to get a booster vaccine shot every six months. Sure, for those with serious per-existing conditions if Covid continues to be a real threat unfortunately wisdom calls for getting these periodic boosters but for healthy people that are not in danger of serious health complications it is tough to find a compelling case for getting the shot. If and this is a titanic size if ,because pharmaceutical companies are pretty nimble, if the pharmaceutical companies need to carry a very large inventory of booster vaccines because if a serious variant comes onto the scene which causes serious health problems, people will be racing to get boosted for the protection and so for public safety a certain availability of the vaccine must be maintained, if Congress finds it necessary to include in this bill paying pharmaceutical companies the "costs" for vaccine boosters that expire even after the Pharmaceutical companies make the great effort to try to coordinate vaccine manufacturing so as to eliminate or greatly reduce the creation of expired vaccines, that would be acceptable government policy.
The Federal Government should have in this bill monies to pay for a deal with anti-viral drug makers like Gilead for remdesivir and Pfizer for Paxlovid to pay for expiring drugs so that there is plenty that can be available if America has another Covid variant like the omicron variant that just sidelines a ton of people that catch the variant, but again, the Pharmaceutical companies should work with the government because maybe no deal is needed that you guys can ramp up production at needed quickness if such an outbreak occurs. Congress should not appropriate one penny for production of Merck's Molnupiravir anti-viral it is a reprehensible disgrace that America has approved such a drug which alters the genetic code of the Sars covid 2 virus in a way that is not completely controlled so thereby risks creating a monster variant. I am not a scientist but as a layman one wonders about the efficacy of doing such a deal for the antibody cocktails for Covid because the antibodies in those pharmaceuticals may be ineffective against future dangerous variants. For testing Congress should not go wild in spending finance things so the testing companies if need be have the ability to ramp up production of test kits.
It doesn't seem fair to try to pay for this bill taking monies from past Covid response bills where monies have not been spent yet if the money was earmarked for a specific state, state's shouldn't be penalized for showing the care they deem necessary in spending this money. National grant programs is another story if grant programs are currently not open for one reason or another, there is no injured party so if Congress and the President want to change their mind about the best use of public monies, why not. Two final points, Congress should appropriate a billion or two for foreign aid for vaccines; it is not reckless spending these poor areas of the world that are not vaccinated because of lack of funds are incubators for the next deadly variant and by giving foreign aid here we are making these incubators as small as possible therby reducing the threat of a wave of pandemic illness which bangs down our economy which costs the American people a lot more than two billion dollars. Lastly, Congress should stop considering this an ordinary piece of legislation demanding it be paid for, this is an emergency piece of legislation like hurricane and wild-fire response legislation; just think back as recently as this past January when the country had the Omicron variant surge it was so bad that people couldn't get test kits anywhere none of the nation's major drug stores had them people were calling out sick in massive numbers and some hospitals were so derailed by the outbreak that they were having healthcare workers come back on the job even if they tested positive as long as they did not show significant symptoms!
The one thing that Federal government officials should be doing and they should be getting the full cooperation of the pharmaceutical companies on this matter. Is they should figure out how many vaccine shots need to be produced for the American population for the year and this is said in the light that ordinary Americans are going to begin to revolt against these vaccines or a more accurate terminology is these booster shots they are asking themselves how much longer is this going to go on I don't like this system where one has to get a booster vaccine shot every six months. Sure, for those with serious per-existing conditions if Covid continues to be a real threat unfortunately wisdom calls for getting these periodic boosters but for healthy people that are not in danger of serious health complications it is tough to find a compelling case for getting the shot. If and this is a titanic size if ,because pharmaceutical companies are pretty nimble, if the pharmaceutical companies need to carry a very large inventory of booster vaccines because if a serious variant comes onto the scene which causes serious health problems, people will be racing to get boosted for the protection and so for public safety a certain availability of the vaccine must be maintained, if Congress finds it necessary to include in this bill paying pharmaceutical companies the "costs" for vaccine boosters that expire even after the Pharmaceutical companies make the great effort to try to coordinate vaccine manufacturing so as to eliminate or greatly reduce the creation of expired vaccines, that would be acceptable government policy.
The Federal Government should have in this bill monies to pay for a deal with anti-viral drug makers like Gilead for remdesivir and Pfizer for Paxlovid to pay for expiring drugs so that there is plenty that can be available if America has another Covid variant like the omicron variant that just sidelines a ton of people that catch the variant, but again, the Pharmaceutical companies should work with the government because maybe no deal is needed that you guys can ramp up production at needed quickness if such an outbreak occurs. Congress should not appropriate one penny for production of Merck's Molnupiravir anti-viral it is a reprehensible disgrace that America has approved such a drug which alters the genetic code of the Sars covid 2 virus in a way that is not completely controlled so thereby risks creating a monster variant. I am not a scientist but as a layman one wonders about the efficacy of doing such a deal for the antibody cocktails for Covid because the antibodies in those pharmaceuticals may be ineffective against future dangerous variants. For testing Congress should not go wild in spending finance things so the testing companies if need be have the ability to ramp up production of test kits.
It doesn't seem fair to try to pay for this bill taking monies from past Covid response bills where monies have not been spent yet if the money was earmarked for a specific state, state's shouldn't be penalized for showing the care they deem necessary in spending this money. National grant programs is another story if grant programs are currently not open for one reason or another, there is no injured party so if Congress and the President want to change their mind about the best use of public monies, why not. Two final points, Congress should appropriate a billion or two for foreign aid for vaccines; it is not reckless spending these poor areas of the world that are not vaccinated because of lack of funds are incubators for the next deadly variant and by giving foreign aid here we are making these incubators as small as possible therby reducing the threat of a wave of pandemic illness which bangs down our economy which costs the American people a lot more than two billion dollars. Lastly, Congress should stop considering this an ordinary piece of legislation demanding it be paid for, this is an emergency piece of legislation like hurricane and wild-fire response legislation; just think back as recently as this past January when the country had the Omicron variant surge it was so bad that people couldn't get test kits anywhere none of the nation's major drug stores had them people were calling out sick in massive numbers and some hospitals were so derailed by the outbreak that they were having healthcare workers come back on the job even if they tested positive as long as they did not show significant symptoms!
