Vice President Biden was a little off-message this morning about what he would advise his family in terms of the current flu crisis.
Asked by NBC's Matt Lauer what he would tell a member of his family who came to him and asked whether he should fly to and from Mexico on a commercial airliner in the next week, the Vice President gave an answer that goes much farther than the precautions the President suggested last night, or the travelers' advisories given by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I would tell members of my family, and I have, 'I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now,'" the Vice President said. "It's not that he's going to Mexico,
it's that you're in a confined aircraft, and one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft."
"That's me," the vice president said.
"I would not be at this point if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway," the president said. "So from my perspective what relates to mitigation, if you're out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that's one thing. If you're in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed class room, it's a different thing."
The airline industry thanks you, Joe.
Yesterday I had a brief conversation with a pulmonologist at the UCLA Medical Center regarding the swine flu. This is a guy who deals with and specializes in diseases of the lungs such as pneumonia. As soon as he heard the words "swine flu" he kind of rolled his eyes and then told me that the regular human flu that goes around each year is much more virulent than the swine version, and the human flu kills something like 36,000 people each year. There's no sign that this swine version will be nearly as bad as that. You're less likely to get it than the human version, and less likely to die from it.
He sees this whole "crisis" as a lot of unnecessary media hype and panic. Who are you going to believe - a lung specialist or Joe Biden?
This may explain why there's been no move by the federal government to close our borders or restrict travel to Mexico. The threat simply isn't that great, but it benefits the administration to keep the hype going so that people will be more inclined to believe that only a nationalized health system and can adequately deal with such a "crisis". Obama needs public support to get his socialized medicine plan through Congress.
The people who claim this is a crisis aren't acting like it's a crisis. That should tell you something.
UPDATE: Bloomberg to ride subway from Gracie Mansion to City Hall... Hizzoner is slapping Biden around a bit.
UPDATE 2: Travel Industry to VP Biden: Zip It It's beat up Joe day!
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