Eight Feet Deep

A mem­o­ran­dum dated Jan. 4  from Adam C. Wal­mus, direc­tor of the Michael E. DeBakey Vet­er­ans Affairs Med­ical Cen­ter (MEDVAMC)  in Hous­ton, and e-mailed Jan. 8 by MEDVAMC spokes­woman  Bobbi Gruner announces vac­ci­na­tions are now avail­able for the 2009 H1N1 flu virus.

All I can say to this is reflected in one of the acronyms used in the head­line above, AFT. The acronym, pro­nounced in the pho­netic alpha­bet we used in the mil­i­tary, is pro­nounced “Alfa Fox­trot Tango.” I don’t know if that is a widely-used acronym but it’s one I chose to use of the ilk pop­u­lar­ized in the Stephen Coonts book and later movie “Flight of the Intruder.” That acronym was “Alfa Mike Fox­trot,” for “adios mother f***er.” I use the acronym “AFT” to mean “Alfa Fox­trot Tango,” to stand for “about f***ing time.”

I am sure there is an expla­na­tion why just now, in Jan­u­ary 2010, the H1N1 shots are now finally avail­able. The VA has known about the so-called “Swine Flu” for quite some time. A Hous­ton VA press release from Octo­ber noted:

“The H1N1 Flu is of con­cern to experts in the med­ical com­mu­nity because it is so new that very few peo­ple have any pro­tec­tion or “immu­nity” which means the virus may eas­ily find vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple to infect. As a result, it may spread rapidly to large num­bers of peo­ple. There­fore, health care facil­i­ties may find it dif­fi­cult to care for large num­bers of patients with severe illness.”

The Octo­ber release went on to say the hos­pi­tal had received 300 doses of the vac­cine and listed the pri­or­ity of those who should get the vac­cine. What they didn’t say was did the patients in those pri­or­ity groups actu­ally receive the shots? What do you want to bet that if I asked the Hous­ton VA who, in fact, received the 300 ini­tial doses I would be told that infor­ma­tion can­not be released due to pri­vacy laws?

I said there was prob­a­bly an expla­na­tion why it’s taken so long to get the H1N1 shots to the gen­eral patient pop­u­la­tion within the MEDVAMC king­dom which includes out­pa­tient clin­ics in Beau­mont, Lufkin, Con­roe and Galve­ston. I didn’t say it was a good explanation.

For­tu­nately, no large out­breaks of the Swine Flu have occured among vet­er­ans in this por­tion of Texas, at least no large out­breaks that come to mind. But the H1N1 is still a pan­demic so it’s for­tu­nate there aren’t more dead, espe­cially older or our youngest, veterans.

When the pan­demic is over, I hope the VA as a whole will do a thor­ough after-action review of their reac­tion to the out­breaks. I’m sure they will, but hope­fully it will be hon­est and not just the same old glazed over horse s**t one seems to see com­ing from one VA report after another. The whole VA phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sys­tem needs a care­ful going-over as well.  I can’t help but think — with such vast dif­fer­ences in med­ica­tion given from one VA hos­pi­tal sys­tem to another — that the acqui­si­tion of med­ica­tions might be ripe for some kind of cor­rup­tion. I’m not say­ing that’s the case, but it’s a suspicion.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s AFT that the Swine Flu shots are avail­able and unless I get the flu first or the VA runs out, I plan to get my vac­cine dur­ing my next reg­u­lar appoint­ment in two weeks.

Something’s rot­ten in Austin

Only a few thoughts to fol­low up on last night’s “Pasadena Mas­sacre.” I am talk­ing about the Citi BCS National Cham­pi­onship in which Texas QB Colt McCoy was knocked out of the game the first rat­tle out of the box. I think The Regents should just pay Mack Brown all those mil­lions and move defen­sive coor­di­na­tor and heir-apparent Will Muschamp up to head coach.

Man, the game just turned to Bevo poo after fresh­man Gar­rett Gilbert was sent in to replace McCoy. I don’t fault Gilbert. I think he showed some flashes of not-badness. It just seemed the game had been chore­o­graphed like a Broad­way pro­duc­tion star­ring McCoy and the stand-in hadn’t been prop­erly trained to know where the other cast mem­bers were sup­posed to stand.

Gilbert made a few bad passes. He was sup­posed to, he is a fresh­man. He also threw some passes that should have been caught. It was if the hearts and souls of the remain­ing offen­sive play­ers flew off to the locker room when McCoy departed with his injured shoulder.

Although the score, 37–21 Alabama, doesn’t really reflect it, the Texas defense looked pretty awe­some. Alabama QB Greg McEl­roy was sacked a season-high five times. That is why I think the loss falls mainly on Mack Brown. It was like he never thought of the pos­si­bil­ity his star quar­ter­back and field mar­shal would get hurt. And since the defense was the bright  spot for Texas and that Brown has made defen­sive guru Muschamp his replace­ment, Brown should have him­self replaced, at head coach at least. They could keep Brown in recruit­ing and PR. He seems to really excel there.

After watch­ing the game, I believe that Texas could have won if McCoy had not been knocked out of the game. But that’s not a given. Run­ning back Mark Ingram brought back visions of “The Earl of Texas,” that being Earl Camp­bell. Both were backs which reminded me of Hur­ri­cane Rita blast­ing her way through the Piney­woods. There wasn’t any­one able to stop her. The same goes for Earl and the Tide’s Ingram. As I heard one caller to a sports talk show say this after­noon, the game was one “played by boys against men.” In a way, the caller was right.

Still, you have to won­der what would have been had McCoy not been injured. And you won­der what round McCoy will go in the NFL draft who picks him. Also, I heard it said that Alabama’s McEl­roy had never lost a foot­ball  game since the eighth grade. How do  you think he will feel when he gets to the NFL and finally loses that first game?