I was watching a cable news station yesterday and it broadcast an item that really got my attention. Seems that some in the government want to have people screened for the H1N1 virus as part of the security process at the airport. Their theory is that such an examination would all but eliminate the possibility of contracting this virus while one is ensconced for hours inside a metal – and primarily uncomfortable tube. What ass did these geniuses just pull their heads out of?

As if the entire TSA (an acronym for “thousands standing around”) ordeal isn’t intrusive enough – take off your shoes and put them on the conveyer belt (NO, not in the bin!); remove your belt and place it and any other metal objects you might have (including your artificial hip) in the plastic container; remove your jacket; remove your hat; oh, hell, as long as you’re at it, remove your pants…the pervert supervising the x-ray machine is looking at you naked, anyway.

On busy days the line to get through security is long enough – especially since TSA doesn’t want to wear out their equipment so they generally try to keep fewer than half the checkpoints open. Part of their justification (at least to themselves) is that by not having to have some of their dozens of excess employees wasting the government’s time by doing their job, they’re free to pounce on some punk of a 90-year-old man (especially if he’s from Bujumbura and doesn’t speak a word of English) who has 4.1 ounce of tooth paste, when the entire free (and even not-free) world knows the limit is 3.0 ounces. At times the lines seem longer than Mao’s Long March.

If the Feds were to allow passenger screening for the H1N1 virus at the same time he or she is going through security, on days like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, depending on your destination, you’ll be walking that far to get to the end of the line. In that instance, instead of arriving at the airport two hours early (or four if it’s an international flight) you’ll have to head out to the airport three weeks early (six weeks if it’s an international flight) to make your airplane on time (and then it would be just barely). And I guarandamntee you, Bobby, that just as you’re getting to the front of the line, the checkpoint will be closing temporarily because it’s break-time for the vastly overworked TSA personnel and unfortunately, it will be the one station that has any semi-trained medical personnel.

Being the logistical genius I’m not, I have an idea how more can get done cheaper and some of the money saved can be used to allow Homeland Security to hire more Mensa graduates for TSA. By the way…what in the wide, wide world of sports does “Homeland Security” mean, anyway? My “homeland” is Valparaiso, Indiana, and the only individual we ever needed security from was crazy, old Nanny Lou, who used to run out of her house and try to knock us off our bicycles as we rode by on the way to Wellman’s Bowling Alley and Family Planning Clinic.

Why doesn’t the government hire a cadre of doctors who have lost their license to practice medicine (after all…everyone deserves a second, third or even tenth chance), some nurses who have lost their jobs because of substance abuse and a bunch of disbarred lawyers and run an assembly line of STD and Arthritis exams and surgeries at airport security stations? I know that I wouldn’t want to be sitting next to someone with Chlamydia and if this condition were diagnosed and treated before my flight to Little Rock, I’d be so grateful for our government protecting me that I’d personally suggest paying more taxes so additional personnel can be hired for the TSA.

Checking for the H1N1 virus at an airport…what the hell is that all about?!!!!

Al Vinikour has not had a fever in his tens of thousands of miles of flying this year and remains H1N1 free.

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Tags: passenger, security, TSA