914...Did You Hear? There Is A Flu Going Around

Apparently.

I have heard about it.

You have heard about it.

Everybody has heard about it.

Everybody except the people who order vaccines for kids apparently.

Caroline Alphonso and Jane Armstrong in today's Globe and Mail write that about 100 students at Notre Dame Regional Secondary School in Vancouver didn't show up for class yesterday, either due to illness or because they were afraid of contracting the H1N1 virus. A student was confirmed to have been infected with H1N1 at the school but the vaccines are still not available.

St. Patrick's Regional Secondary, also in Vancouver, and Shawnigan Lake School, a boarding school on Vancouver Island, also had swine flu cases. Perfect, flu at a boarding school, whatever could go wrong.

Wait, there is more. At Elsie Roy public elementary in Vancouver, 113 of 329 pupils were absent, as well as six staff members. Flu fears.

A vaccine likely won't be rolled out until mid-November, although federal, read Stephen Harper's Conservatives, officials have indicated it could be pushed forward if the swine flu virus quickly turns more severe.

The country below us, the one with the supposedly crap health care system, the United States, will start its H1N1 vaccine campaign early next month.

Perhaps, and this is just a thought, the Tories could send body bags to Elsie Roy, St. Patrick's and the rest of the schools on the west coast?

No need to be unprepared right Leona?

WFDS

689...Emile Loranger Meet Donald Trump

Donald Trump is, of course, Donald Trump. Emile Loranger is the Mayor of the small, about 12 k, town of L'Ancienne-Lorette which is a western suburb of Quebec City and is best known as the place that NHL tough guy John Kordic died of a drug overdose in back in 1992.

The reason I am introducing Mr. Trump and Mr. Loranger is that they are of the same mind when it comes to shaking hands. They don't like it. Spreads too many germs it does. Mr. Trump doesn't shake hands; Mr. Lorette, being a mayor and all that, has taken it one step further and CanWest News Service is banning handshakes in his re election campaign this fall.

All in the name of preventing the spread of the H1N1 virus.

WFDS