A story that hasn't gotten much play in the mainstream Western media is the situation in the Ukraine. It began a few days ago as reports began appearing about a serious outbreak of flu there. Rapidly, the story escalated to the point of the closing of schools, the discouraging of public gatherings, and the overloading of hospitals, with a number of fatalities.
Neighboring countries evidently are toying with the idea of border closings and travel restrictions. How did things get this crazy, this quickly?
Several theories have been advanced. For instance, maybe the Ukrainian government wasn't proactive enough in educating its citizens about swine flu. Or perhaps there hasn't been an ambitious enough vaccine acquisition program in that part of the world. Need proof? Well, it seems that the Ukraine is looking at asking other nations to send some of their supplies to help ease the Ukrainian shortfall.
There has even been concern that this flu is a variant of the original swine flu, a more virulent strain that causes extensive bleeding in the lungs and death in a few days.
Going down yet another rabbit hole, it has even been advanced that Baxter Pharmaceuticals (of the "Oops! We sent tainted vaccine to a number of countries" fame -- see my posts about that here and here) went and intentionally released a weaponized form of the H1N1 virus in order to destabilize the region. Now, I'm as big a conspiracy nut as the next guy (actually, I'd bet that I'm a bigger conspiracy nut than the next guy -- and, hey, why is that next guy looking at me like that? Is he one of them???). However, I'm not sure I buy the weaponized flu yarn. Now, a weaponized vaccine yarn -- that I'd buy.
[Wait a minute, maybe Baxter released the weaponized flu so that they could get big bucks to make a vaccine against the very thing they released. Owww, my head is starting to hurt. Make it stop! Make it stop!]
Sorry, back to reality. Actually, I'm beginning to feel that there are more down-to-earth, but equally devious things going on. As the brouhaha has died down a bit, it looks like there may be political machinations behind all the hype. I know you're shocked. So was I. Politicians making hay over anything they can? Absurd!
See, here's what's happening on the Ukrainian political stage. There's a presidential election coming up in January, and it's a tight one. As such, it's important that the candidates appear strong; you know, able to handle any crisis -- like, say, an outbreak of pandemic flu.
So, candidates are standing about, greeting shipments of vaccine at the airport, waving their arms about in a presidential fashion, all the while criticizing the current government for its mishandling of the affair. Sadly, a World Health Organization (WHO) team that has been called to the Ukraine hasn't felt this outbreak to be particularly nasty. Terribly inconvenient for the arm-waving candidates, what?
It seems that Ukrainian politics has a flair lacking in the USA. After all, the current Ukrainian prez, Viktor Yushchenko, made headlines during his election in 2005 by claiming that he had been poisoned by his rivals with dioxin during a dinner party. Dramatic before and after pictures (um, "before" is on the left, "after" on the right) were published. Now, it seems that all this may have been a fraud to get sympathy votes.
During his term, Yushchenko has found his approval ratings dropping like a stone, and the recent world-wide economic downturn has only made matters worse. Also, he would like closer ties with Russia. This has fueled some vitriolic politicking on both sides. In a scenario like this, H1N1 seems like something heaven-sent. What an opportunity!
And to think we were all a-twitter when Bush choked on a pretzel.
