Cold virus kills 10; government does little

It's hard to believe this is America in 2007, but here we are.

George Washington died from complications of a common cold. But that was over 200 years ago. In recent years, America's ability to deal with such an infection has taken repeated steps backward. One of the more serious blows was when Mad Dog Bush helped defund an important international research center (which shut down for good as a result). Another is the general decline in the American health care system in the past 25 years. Also to blame are the overall decline in sanitation standards, the flooding of drugstores with worthless crap that doesn't do any good, and a deliberate and malicious effort to deny people medicines that work.

Maybe now all the people who say that "it's just a cold" will shut up now that the CDC has revealed that a common cold virus has been the direct cause of at least 140 illnesses and 10 deaths nationwide just in the past 18 months. This adenovirus is seen all over the country but for some reason seems to be limited to the United States.

The CDC - in its usual state of denial - says this epidemic isn't a cause for concern. But I say it is. For one, when new infections have appeared in America in the past 20 years or so, they've seldom become less common after their initial appearance. For another thing, there's no conventional antiviral drugs available for it in the U.S., and the government isn't doing much to stop the spread of this virus.

The best antiviral I know of for fighting colds that's readily available is putting hydrogen peroxide in the ears. This home remedy has been 100% effective for me for several years - but what angers me is that the drug companies won't approve it to be mentioned in the official media or allow doctors to suggest it to patients. I'm not a doctor, but I'd recommend that you mention this household cure to your physician just to see how they react. The pharmaceutical industry would rather have you spend many times as much for cold medicine that doesn't work as you would for peroxide.

I'm wondering how much longer before the government outlaws hydrogen peroxide. Seriously. The more effective a medicine is, the faster it gets banned - forcing people to buy more expensive drugs that don't even work. That's what happens when the drug companies bribe Congress. It's a neat little racket they've got going: Lobby lawmakers to ban cures that work because they can't be patented, invent drugs that don't work, sell them at an inflated price, and then bribe the government not to do anything about spreading infections - so people buy more shit that doesn't work.

A few years ago, some bloke told me he had just retired from the Air Force after 20 years and was shocked at how bad health care for civilians had declined. He said America's fighting men and women actually got decent health care. (This was before the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal.) In the armed forces, at the first sign of a cold, you see a doctor, and you get a drug that knocks it right out. That's because if the military forced its troops to endure the same shitty health care that plagues civilian America, military personnel would be bedridden much of the time. In the wake of the fatal cold virus outbreak, military officials are instituting an adenovirus vaccine.

The supply of vaccine is probably limited, so the military is a high priority to receive it. This makes sense, because it's needed for the functioning of the armed forces. In the meantime, the civilian population is going to keep buying over-the-counter quackery, spreading the new adenovirus, and dying.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071116/ap_on_he_me/deadly_virus;
http://forums.houseofcrazed.com/dr-s-office/10335-cure-common-cold.html)