Item 1 (of 2): Mutiny in Iraq. AOL today hilited a report by the Associated Press that up to 19 members of an army reserve supply unit stationed in Iraq are under confinement and being investigated for possible "disciplinary measures" (court-martial? execution?) for refusal to follow orders to take trucks in bad repair, that had only "homemade" armor, on a supply mission up one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq. One of the female members of the mutinous platoon called her mother in Dothan, Alabama to say:

''This is a real, real, big emergency,'' McClenny said in her message. ''I need you to contact someone. I mean, raise pure hell.''* * *

Staff Sgt. Christopher Stokes, a 37-year-old chemical engineer from Charlotte, N.C., went to Iraq with the 343rd but had to come home because of an injury. He said reservists were given inferior equipment and tensions in the company had been building since they were deployed in February.

''It wasn't really safe,'' he said. ''The vehicles are not all that up to par anyway. The armor that they have is homemade. It's not really armor. It's like little steel rails.'' * * *

The platoon has troops from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina[.]

The report says the story first broke in The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss. (The Clarion-Ledger has a wonderful feature at its website, online postcards that one can send to friends to show them Jackson-area sights. I discovered this several months ago and think it's something our local (Newark) newspaper, The Star-Ledger, should emulate.)
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The Bush Administration is in deep, deep trouble if SOUTHERN reservists are refusing to follow orders in his insane war, and calling their mommies to complain bitterly about the conditions they are serving under and the dangers they are being subjected to in having to take dangerous vehicles over dangerous roads in a war many people in the South and elsewhere do not see any reason for us to have undertaken, now that the reasons given have all been proved false.
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The South is Bush's base, the only possible source of a victory in November. He has tried to worry Southerners about attacks by furriners upon the U.S. "homeland", but their sons and daughters aren't stationed here in the Good Old U.S. of A. to protect us from invasion. They're 7,000 miles from Alabama and Mississippi, risking their lives — for what? People in the isolation-inclined South will find it increasingly hard to come up with an answer to that question.

Item 2: Flu-Shot Tyranny. Talk about government intrusion on medical decisions, which the Bush Administration is supposed to oppose (which is one way it justifies its opposition to universal health coverage)! AP reports that several states and the District of Columbia are threatening healthcare workers with JAIL if they give flu shots to "healthy, low-risk people". That's insane, and should be fought tooth and nail by everyone who cares about civil liberties. If the courts can't or won't act in timely fashion, the people should take the law into their own hands — which is where the law resides, in the people — and mob the legislators who passed such laws and the people who enforce them, and beat them so severely they will never again so much as attempt such high-handed tyranny.
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It is not for government to say who can get what medications, when. The influenza strains we now face are not the Black Death nor bubonic plague. They're not even the horrendous strain that killed millions around the world in 1918. Government has absolutely no authority to interfere with private health decisions as regards flu shots.
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Yes, some people do die every year from the flu, but almost all of them are elderly and infirm, and everybody has to die sometime, from something. A lot of the oldest among us are weary of life, and are just waiting for death to take them. For some people, then, flu is a release from a life of uselessness and loneliness. Religious people might say it is God's will, his "calling them home" and ending their suffering. Nonreligious people can nonetheless see death as a blessing for some, among whom number people who have outlived all their friends and many of their relatives, including their own children, or who never had children so have no one on Earth to live for.
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In fighting off the flu or anything else, will to live is crucial. So maybe a large proportion of the elderly who die from the flu surrender to it gladly.
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There is a famous story, Death Takes a Holiday, by the Italian writer Alberto Casella, that has been made into two movies (one by the same name, in 1934, and a derivative work, the Brad Pitt movie Meet Joe Black, in 1998). In the 1934 film, Fredric March plays Death, who takes human form to try to understand why people cling to life. While he is 'on holiday', many disasters that would ordinarily kill people take place, but everyone survives. Unfortunately, many of the people who survive are in hideous agony that only death can end — but Death is on vacation, so people linger in agony. He eventually returns to active duty, and ends the misery of thousands.
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This parable teaches that all life ends in death, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, because with death, suffering ends. And for many people, to live is to suffer.
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While it may seem callous to mention it, the frail elderly are often a drain on a family's financial and emotional resources. As long as a parent or grandparent enjoys life despite all, a family or society may gladly undertake the burden. But when life is a burden for everyone, death from flu isn't a bad end.
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Putting all that aside, flu shots themselves entail health risks for some people, especially those who have an allergy to eggs (since the virus used is grown in hen's eggs). Many people whom government advises to get flu shots do not in fact get them, for their own reasons. And flu shots don't always work:

It's possible to get the flu if you are exposed right before getting a flu shot and up to two weeks after a shot, because the vaccine takes two weeks to kick in. Older people with low immune systems may get the flu anyway, but a milder case.

In Seattle, the union representing 600 nurses who were ordered to get flu shots or be fired(!) filed suit to stop forced inoculations because these people, who should know about the risks, did not wish to be subjected to medical treatment they regard as unnecessary, possibly ineffective against influenza, and risky to their health in other regards, all without their consent. A Seattle Times columnist, Danny Neat, on October 8th observed:

Last year, the flu shot didn't work so well. It's estimated that half the adults who came down with flu had first gotten the shot.

This year, some flu vaccine is contaminated. When discovered in August, U.S. officials promised it was no big deal.

They were undercut this week by the British, who, citing bacterial contamination, shut down a plant that makes half our vaccine supply. * * *

In their court filing, the nurses go so far as to allege that requiring flu shots violates the hospital's duty "to maintain a safe and healthy workplace." * * *

Add to that the constant problems with the vaccine supply and its spotty record at warding off flu. It hardly inspires confidence, does it? * * *

Until healthy, intelligent doctors and nurses are willing to take the shot without being forced, count me out.

Compulsion has no place in medicine. None at all. Not to force people to take a given medication or vaccine. Not to deny patients their choice of medications or vaccines. Being safe and feeling safe may not be the same thing. But being safe while feeling unsafe is not a desirable state, and people have the right to make irrational choices in their own medical treatment. If a doctor chooses to give a flu shot to a patient that the government — the government! — says isn't "at risk" of serious adverse consequences if s/he should in fact get the flu because s/he was denied vaccine, that is his medical judgment. Government has no right to interfere with such judgments but should butt out!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:42 PM