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24 May 2020
The Swine Flu Vaccine Screw Up
Barbara Ehrenreich article entitled “The swine flu vaccine screw-up” was written 3 November 2009.Ehrenreich summarizes her view on the swine flu vaccine screw-up as a result of overdue optimism. Ehrenreich target audience is the general public.
Barbara Ehrenreich tries to convince the audience that the swine flu vaccine was as a result of putting too much faith on big pharmaceutical companies to safeguard public health. She expresses this in an aggressive tone saying that the whole swine flu is as a result of undue optimism on both the Obama administration and Big Pharma (Ehrenreich par 1). She employs ethos, pathos, and logos and this helps her convince her audience accordingly.
In her article, Barbara first stages her thoughts sarcastically by describing optimism as good for once health. With the same tone and diction, Barbara further outlines that optimism is sufficient enough to cure illness (par. 2).Barbra ridicules the optimism promoters that optimism miracle vaccine (par. 2).Her use of sarcastic tone may make her audience doubt her objectivity.
There is a shift in tone when she goes from a sarcastic to dignified tone on paragraph three when Barbara outline that optimism becomes less healthy when it comes to the health of the public. The change in tone is to emphasize that optimism is not sufficient enough to solve current health problems. Barbara expresses her disappointment on the failure of the federal government to avail enough doses of H1N1 vaccine on time (par. 3).She attributes this failure to undue optimism. She goes to quote a New York Times magazine “Road to Flu Vaccine Shortfall, Paved with Undue Optimism, “This quote was to put the emphasis of optimism as the genesis of the swine flu screw up. (par.3)The writer goes on to create a pessimistic tone by expressing her doubt on the government’s capability to carry out health reforms (par.3).
On the fourth paragraph, Barbra moves on by questioning whether the government is to blame for the screw-up or is it the private pharmaceutical companies who should take the blame (par. 4).Barbara employs irony when describing how the big pharmaceutical companies “gleefully gobbled” governments money promising to deliver vaccines on time but fail to deliver. Although most part of this articles Barbra’s use of pathos may seem weak, she gracefully integrates pathos at the end of fourth paragraph “[…] promising to have every American, or at least every American child and pregnant woman […]”This statement tends to sway her audience emotionally.
Barbara quotes the health and human services secretary Kathleen Sibelius who blamed the pharmaceutical companies for misleading them on the manufacturing delay(par. 5)The health and service secretary Kathleen Sibelius acknowledges that the numbers that the companies submitted to the government were overestimated(par. 5).
Barbara’s expresses that the government has mistaken belief that Big Business are the best option on safeguarding the public health(par. 6).The writer ridicules the government decision-making process insinuating that the government’s decisions on carrying out health reforms are not satisfactory since the options/companies they choose only aims at making profits. At the end of the sixth paragraph, there is a shift in tone from sarcastic to sympathetic. She argues that the insurance companies turn away people who may need their services more like the pregnant and the uninsured since these companies their aim are profits (par.6).Here Barbara tries to appeal to her audience by use of ethos. She tries to argue from a moral stand and point and recognizes that is not right for this big insurance companies to only focus on profits but should consider taking care of people’s health.
Barbara moves on to view Big pharma concerns that they approached the H1N1 problem ploddingly (par. 6).She further goes on describing that the technology used was outdated and it involved the production of the virus in chicken eggs a method that is no longer employed by China and the European Union(par. 6).
On the ninth paragraph, the author enumerates that the genesis of the swine flu screw up was because the government had put so much trust on Big Pharma to deliver the vaccine in time. Here we also see the author employing pathos as she describes how small children prone to the virus since the vaccine wasn’t successfully sufficient (par.9).
Barbara moves on to say that optimism is neither an elixir nor a lifesaving vaccine (par. 10) Barbara concludes her article by affirming that there is need to socialize vaccine manufacture as well as its distribution and not depend on optimism.
Work cited
Ehrenreich, Barbara. “The Swine Flu Vaccine Screw-up.” Barbara’s Blog, 3Nov. 2009,www.enhrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2009/11/the-swine-flu-vaccine-screwup.html.