What did the US government do to help stop the Swine Flu outbreak?

Answer 1

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) and many other disease control centers from various nations to select the correct virus for use in a vaccine and to select and monitor the manufacturers to be contracted to prepare vaccines for the Novel H1N1 pandemic swine flu in time for the 2009 -2010 flu season and pandemic. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also evaluated and approved the vaccines once prepared. The US government agencies then facilitated the release and distribution of the vaccine to the US states for their further statewide distribution, first to the highest risk patients and then to all seeking the vaccine.

Funding was made available by the US government for the vaccines and for the vaccination program to make it available to all who needed it.

Continual monitoring and testing was done and is still ongoing to track the spread of the flu and confirm suspected cases when patients have been hospitalized. The CDC is still the main laboratory for the confirmation of the specific virus in medical testing.

The government (CDC) held frequent updates and news conferences to keep the citizens informed at the start of the pandemic and provided guidelines for use of respirators and many other types of guidelines to help prevent the spread of the disease.

In addition, monitoring the world situation to issue any necessary travel advisories was done by both the CDC and by the US State Department, as well as Homeland Security.

The CDC was a leader in studying the behavior of the new strain of virus and reporting to and collaborating with other international governments and health organizations.

President Obama spoke to the population to keep them informed and prepared. He worked to assure the government was properly funded to do what was needed to protect citizens from the flu.

The US is part of the World Health Organization (WHO) and took an active role in recording cases and monitoring locations where the H1N1 Pandemic virus was being identified. In addition scientists from around the states and Universities were hard at work, cooperating with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) to create the vaccine and prepare for the next stages of the pandemic.

Much information is available at the link below on Swine Flu from the CDC and WHO. The International updates and information from WHO also provided information on what other world governments were doing to control the pandemic, and helped coordinate the cooperation between them and the CDC and WHO. In addition, all US state governments, the federal government, CDC, WHO, and governments of international nations all were campaigning about the importance of washing hands, avoiding crowds, vaccinating the population and other important information on preventing the spread of the new virus.

Initially, most governments were being cautious, since this was a new strain of flu that was not understood yet and appeared to be killing young, healthy people. Given the economy these days, the last thing anybody wanted was for people in their working prime to start getting sick or dying. The risk of creating fear by aggressively spreading information was weighed against the empowerment gained by being in greater control of the spread of this flu.

The alternative was to understate the potential danger and seriousness of this flu in the hopes of preventing fear and its possible impact on the economy. Most people understand that it is better to take some unnecessary precautions than to let a communicable disease spread wildly and potentially mutate into something even more dangerous.