Please get your swine flu vaccination as soon as possible

  I have had a change of heart. I have not been a believer in the swine flu hysteria that has swept across the world. I believed that it was nothing more than a contrived crisis by the media and a faux crisis that the president and the politicians have glommed on to in order to continue a crisis mentality that would culminate in the signing of the healthcare reform bill.

  But now with this report from the United Nations that millions of people could die and anarchy will spread across the world if people do not get vaccinated I have had a change of heart. I am asking everybody to please, please, please get vaccinated and please get your children vaccinated. It is the right thing to do.

  So why this change of heart that certainly seems out of character? I am sure that is the question that regular readers here might have and so I will attempt to explain.

  I work for a company that builds control cabinets for process systems. We build the automated electrical control systems for a local company that then incorporates our electrical systems into their mechanical systems to perform certain automated functions. This company is not the final destination of these systems, once the systems are complete they are shipped off to the ultimate customer.

  Once our control cabinets are complete and shipped out to the local company that is our customer I am in charge of a small field group that installs our cabinets into the system. It is my responsibility to “layout” the  systems and incorporate them to customer specifications and completely wire the systems in time for final test and shipment.

 Recently we have been under enormous pressure to meet a rigorous schedule and the customer is unwilling to change the schedule at all. I have been working twelve hour days during the week and ten hours on Saturday to meet this schedule.

  What does this have to do with the swine flu? Well, you see, the systems that we build are for pharmaceutical products. Once the systems leave our local customer they head to companies like Genzyme, Merck, Amgen, Genentech, PDL, and GSK. These systems eventually are used to create drugs.

  It is this last company, GSK, that has held us to an almost unattainable schedule. But the question is, why are they so unwilling to change their schedule by even a few days in order to give us enough time to complete the job on a more reasonable schedule?

  It wasn’t until last Wednesday that I learned why the schedule was so rigid. The systems that I am working on are going to be used to create the swine flu vaccine.

  Because of the swine flu hysteria I have been working extra hours and making extra money that I can use to better provide for my family. So while I still believe that this whole pandemic talk is a product of an overzelious media I have been a direct beneficiary of the hysteria.

  This provides us with what the president likes to call a “teachable moment” because while the government is trying to paint large companies, such as big pharmaceutical, as greedy, money grabbing companies who make a profit off of the misery of others and punish them for it there is more to the story. And this applies to other big corporations as well.

  The government likes to claim that big drug companies, (and all big companies in general) make a large profit and are run by greedy executives. And while it is true that the drug companies make billions of dollars a year the government seems to overlook the fact that the drug companies themselves employ hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to make that profit. The government also seems to overlook the fact that the drug companies provide thousands of manufacturing jobs, such as mine, to the people who build the systems that will be used to make their product.

  Big companies provide jobs for Americans that might not otherwise be there. So while the president is vilifying big companies for the profits they make he would be well served to remember that these companies not only provide a service to the American people, they also provide jobs to the American people. Jobs for average Americans like myself. Everyone wins under this scenario.

  So remember to get your swine flu vaccination, do it for my children.