The effects of the attacks against health facilities emanate far beyond those immediately killed and injured. They demolish routine and lifesaving health care for all. They make life impossible. Full stop.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The whole purpose of those attacks was to drive those contractors out. Lots of them had to leave. They were terrified.
During the summer of 2009, the debate on health care reform was emotional and intense. At its best, it represented the free exchange of ideas that makes this country great. At its worst, it generated death threats and acts of violence.
Hospital-acquired infections are now killing more people every year in the United States than die from AIDS or cancer or car accidents combined - about 100,000.
Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, oil spills and radioactive fallout cause massive death of people, pigs, bats and birds. These disasters also impact the immune health of survivors. All harbor viruses.
No matter what the president or anyone tried to do on health care, they never got the headlines, because the Gulf oil spill happened. It seemed like it sucked the wind out of the whole health care debate.
While Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the dangers of failing to evacuate hospitals from the path of a storm, Hurricane Gustav demonstrated that moving thousands of sick people has its own risks. Gustav also highlighted a critical vulnerability of American hospitals - an inability to withstand prolonged blackouts.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as more recent attacks in Madrid, Spain, and London, England, showed in a very tragic way just how vulnerable many areas of the world are to these sorts of actions.
Surely, it's one of terrorism's intended effects, to literally stun our morale, to blow up strength and will along with buildings, and the reaction is hard to counter.
You can't stop wars to build tertiary teaching hospitals, but you can say, 'Let's stop for a couple of days to immunise the kids.' It has been done.
Greed, accident, or malice may have harmful results, but, barring something truly apocalyptic, a resilient system can absorb such results without its overall health being threatened.