Swine flu shot yesterday, and have spent today feeling decidedly under the weather.
The shot was free, and today I was musing on how fortunate we are here in Iceland, that despite the kreppa and everything supposedly going straightway to hell, we can still walk into our local public health centre and get vaccinated against swine flu, free of charge.
And then I remembered what I was reading in Fréttablaðið yesterday – that in 2007, the year that has come to symbolize all the bloated excess of the Icelandic economic “boom”, there was a three-year waiting list for the State Diagnostic and Counselling Centre, which serves disabled children and their families. Waiting lists for the children’s psychiatric unit at the National Hospital were not much shorter.
In other words, all this wealth that was supposedly floating around was certainly not serving the weak or downtrodden.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The trickle down effect of Thatcherite economics always was a myth. The swine flu jab in England is also a myth- only available to pregnant women, front line health workers and children under 5.
By the time the trickle down becomes effective, we will all have suffered from swine flu or be immune- just like we were with Thatcherite economics!
Watch out- there’s a lot of it still about!
sylvia from viking wirral
One key aspect of Iceland society which may suffer due the kreppa is health care. Perhaps it already has. If, as you point out, it already was less than perfect, so maybe now in ‘reorganization’ the chance to get it right.
In that regard I have more hope for Iceland than the United States. With roughly 50 million Americans without health insurance, and a good deal more than that with inadequate insurance, it is no wonder that health costs are one of the leading causes of personal bankruptcy, or that getting patched up in an emergency room the only option many Americans have.
Our Congress is on the verge of passing something and calling it a success, but it will still leave many Americans without insurance or access to decent health care, and moreover actually increase the overall cost of health care for this nation. The one thing they should actually have solved. It is lamentable they should have wasted such an opportunity in time, but what has materialized from this most clearly is that our politician’s allegiance is with corporate pharmaceutical companies and the lobbyists’ of the health care industry that pay to get them re-elected, and not the health of their constituents who actually cast the votes.
Iceland can hopefully do better.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Poland did not buy any swine flu vaccine, and they’ve had less deaths than many of those who bought.
This wouldn’t surprise me, as in my country the shot has been given also (and especially) to people in bad health. One who died was a cancer patient in ‘late stages’. This was counted as a death caused by swine flu, although in reality it was probably the vaccine that killed him. Even perfectly healthy people have gotten strong physical reactions after taking the swine flu shot, how much more those whose health is fragile.
Moreover, the swine flu shot is not free, unless the big corporations providing vaccine haven’t turned philantrophic. Considering how many shots are left unused, or thrown to rubbish, the price of one swine flu shot for taxpayers can be quite a lot.
Is swine flu still a matter of major concern in Iceland? In Germany it seems to have lost its scare – at least temporarily – and far less people than expected have chosen to get vaccinated against swine flu, by now. Therefore, the health authorities had to renegotiate with the producers to cancel almost half of the preordered vaccine doses.
@Joerg: This is due to the communication desaster about this vaccination. Its neither new (except the H1N1 part) nor unsafe. How the swine flu will develop is actually unknown – actually mankind can be very lucky that its a mild strain. Otherwise the consequences would have been catastrophic. But there is no guarantee, that the second wave will be the same or that the virus does not mutate. The first wave of the 1918 virus (also known as spanish flu) was also not very harmful. Vaccination makes sense – in my family nobody had side effects from it.
Joerg – the worst part is over, but the Surgeon General is warning that we might be in for a new strain later this winter, and recommends vaccination.
@idunn
>Iceland can hopefully do better.’
They could hardly do worse.
Well, there may be long waiting lists for certain medical care (as well as economic and political crises) in Iceland, but at least the President’s wife is having a jolly time in India. Apparently she went missing for so long that tens of police were assigned to find her and the army was about to mobilised – but then she returned to her hotel with shopping bags…
nah, top health officials are now talking about the swine flu as a full-blown scare war – see here and more.