By: AFP
Wednesday, November 04, 2009

WASHINGTON — A timely sneeze made Americans more likely to back substantial government spending on health care than on job creation, a study concluded Monday.

A group of people interviewed at a Michigan shopping mall at the end of May -- around one month into the flu outbreak and several years into the US economic downturn which has seen joblessness spike -- was asked if they would rather that the government spend 1.3 billion dollars on flu vaccine production or on green job creation.

If the interviewer had just feigned a sneeze -- into the crook of her elbow as advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- 48 percent of study participants said they backed the huge government investment in vaccine production, compared with just 17 percent of participants who were not exposed to a sneeze.

---

To read the article, see the google.com website at www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iEdv35wDv-UhHmasUPQdGC_vOpGA