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Monday, November 9, 2009

H1N1 Vaccinations--Barometers of Status?

In the US, Goldman-Sachs gets more bad press (I guess they believe that even bad publicity is better than no publicity?!) for getting vaccinations against h1n1 before their time.  In Canada, the Calgary Flames (a hockey team for the ignorant Americans) got their shots ahead of schedule.

Does this reflect a deep cultural divide?  Sort of.  In Montreal, those donating to Montreal Jewish General got shots ahead of schedule as well, so in either country, money talks. 

I do thing that times of crisis can be quite revealing.  I guess the pandemic of h1n1 counts (at least if one counts how many extensions I gave on a paper this week for my large Intro to IR class).  And we are seeing some great behavior and some awful behavior. 

For a mix of the two: in Montreal, the latest news is that there is effort to deploy retired nurses to help out with shots and care, I think on a volunteer basis.  Very clever idea.  However, these nurses may have to pay $300 per nurse to pay the fee of the nurses' association (union).  Also very clever, but not very productive from the standpoint of what is good for society. 

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