Before going further, just want to note that an article in The New York Times this morning, says “U.S. Says Older People Appear Safer From Virus.” If you’re over 52, the odds are on your side.
This is not a happy story.
Is it just me that was lulled into thinking the city, the state and the country had this swine flu thing under control? Well, we found far the opposite, when a young woman in my office — Modesta Zapata, who does have health insurance — started off complaining about a sore throat.
Being an upstanding citizen, she did was the media told her to do. She went to the doctor. The situation went down hill from there. Not only was she misdiagnosed by him, she, later sat for four hours in a hospital emergency room … put up with some unnecessary insults … left searching for another doctor who would see her … and, then, once she finally had an appointment, ended up having to go out and get cotton swabs so that doctor could swab her throat. Test results days later showed that she did, indeed, have swine flu. (Read Modesta’s total story in her post here.)
Obviously, as Modesta lived through this drama, she probably passed her bug on to others: at the hospital … in the subway … among friends … and, the dozens of strangers she came into contact with. All because that very first doctor — in spite of all the news broadcasts and alerts — never honed in on the real problem or, at the very least, tested her.
People! What happens if there really is a flu pandemic of the worst sort?
I’m not an alarmist, but if this is an indication of what’s going on in this city, Mayor Bloomberg needs to be rethinking how things work around here. Not to mention that on a national basis, someone really needs to get on top of this.
Oh, and the kicker. After Modesta got absolutely NO help from any of those with the authority or expertise to give her what she actually needed, she received a bill for over $1000 from the hospital. Outrageous!
This can’t possibly be an isolated case, and there must be others who’d like to give a shout? Has anyone out there had a similar experience or know of one?
Incompetence and bureaucratic nightmares aside, it’s a good thing we snoety readers know that it’s not so bad to get this flu now because it may very well immunize us against the next one. (See our “Should you want to catch flu?” story.) If they don’t get things fixed around here, that’s the one we’ll really need to worry about.
Harriett
PS: I’m not the only one unhappy with the Mayor as reported in this story in The New York Times today (Wed., May 20th), “Bloomberg Navigates the Politics of a Health Scare“
