nabeepchen

The questionable safety of Canadian approved drugs, which are often made in the U.S. and approved by our FDA before being sold to Canada, is the pathetic argument for not allowing Americans to buy their medication north of the border. Never mind that they may be making minimum wage and have no health insurance or prescription plan; our government wants them to pay the price gouging rates charged in this country.

Okay, fast forward. Suddenly, Canada has become safe. Government officials are in the midst of contacting companies that make flu vaccines for other countries to see whether they have any excess doses lying around. Strangely enough, this includes a Canuk company (you know, the place that makes and sells drugs too lethal for Americans) called ID Biomedical. This heathen Canadian company may just be the savior to our current influenza vaccine crisis, in that they might have about 1.5 million excess doses lying around and gathering dust.

Bush vaguely referred to this phenomenon in his debate with Senator John Kerry on October 13, which is a complete turn around of his previous opposition to tapping the Canadian market. So what it boils down to is that Canadian drugs and medical products really are safe enough to give to Americans. Afterall, we wouldn’t be giving a contaminated and unsafe flu vaccine to our tiny tots, now would we?

However, this changes of course, if the Canadian drugs and medical products might be competing with those sold in the U.S. Then their safety is dubious, and cannot be guaranteed.

There’s an interesting article about this in the New York Times, that appeared today. However, this link will only be good for seven days, and then it goes into archives, never to be seen again. Unless you purchase the article, or are a subscriber.

I hope I’m not insulting the fair city of Seattle, or my fellow Seattle-dwellers, but I have to say, the prevalence of public spitting in this city is just atrocious. While I can’t say for sure that Seattle ranks number one in terms of spit-per-capita, I have never seen public spitting to this degree in any other American city that I’ve either lived in or visited.

So what is it about spitting as a public past time? Certainly, it doesn’t fit the image of Seattle, as a clean, environmentally conscious, and politically correct city. The emerald city, which sits sandwiched in between the snow-capped Cascades and Olympics, beneath the sinister persona of Mt. Rainier (in case you’ve forgotten, a giant and active volcano), saturated in brilliant greenery and breathtaking views, is a mecca for spitters.

When I first moved here, a neighbor pointed out that insidious little habit, but I thought she was just being nit-picky. Perhaps she was one of those super-clean fanatics who scrubbed her walls down daily with bleach, in the hopes of destroying microbes before they got to her. But then soon afterwards, as I ventured out into the streets of my new home, I nearly got hit in the face by a wad of spit. I happened to be downwind from two very nice and normal looking men, when suddenly the head of one turned and out flew the glob. I jumped, just in the nick of time, as the wind scattered that slimy bits of goop around the street.

Yeech. Yuck. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

It’s one thing if you’re choking and got to spit, just to avoid suffocation. That’s excusable. But the people I see spitting range in age from one to 100, dress in suits, rags and everything in between, appear to have all degrees of mental ability (from the seemingly sane to the ones screaming at phantom figures), and comprise both genders. Nope, and it’s not just a guy thing. Sweet faced girls with apple red cheeks can shoot a mean spitball and paint our sidewalks with biological graffiti, same as any male. I’ve seen ‘em do it, and it’s no less distasteful.

I also see people casually walking along, then just turn their heads and spit, not caring where it goes or where it lands. Yes, the rest of us just relish the thought of having to make sure that we don’t step in your pile of mucus. Not that you can even aim for the gutter.

Besides just being a disgusting habit, influenza and other respiratory viruses are spread by spitting. But since we are about to enter the flu season, with a shortage of flu vaccine, let’s take a look at influenza. It is spread from person to person by direct contact, large droplet infection, (i.e. from sneezing, coughing, spitting), or articles recently contaminated by nasopharyngeal (the stuff in your nose and throat) secretions. The flu is highly contagious.

The 1918 Pandemic and Sars

Not very many of us remember the Spanish Influenza pandemic, which caused between 20 and 40 million deaths between 1918 and 1919. Seattle was hit with the Spanish flu on October 3, 1918, and 1,600 people eventually died of it. Because Seattle was hit with the flu about two months later than the east coast, health officials here had time to prepare, and thus, managed to keep the death toll light. In addition to closing theaters and schools, banning public gatherings, and encouraging the use of gauze masks, public spitting was banned. And the ban was strictly enforced.

The same thing happened in China, during the SARS epidemic in 2003. Public spitting, very common in Beijing and other cities, became taboo. Plastic bags were handed out for people to spit in (if you can’t cure a habit, at least contain it), and fines were implemented for public spitting. In Singapore, fines were also levied against spitters, to the tune of about $260.

I don’t think it would be a bad idea to implement here. Either be required to clean up after yourself, much as you do with dog poo-poo; carry a plastic bag to spit into, or face a fine. Sound harsh? Not really. If you saw someone pissing on the street, would you think it’s okay? Piss doesn’t carry any germs by the way, it’s sterile when it comes out of your body, unless you’ve got an infection. So in that sense, it really is less detrimental than spitting.