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I agree that the media has made the shortage worse. But there is no doubt that the season has started earlier than usual. It would be helpful to know how many children have died of the flu in past years. Then useful comparisons can be made.

The problem with the vaccine availibility is that the number of doses have to planned in advance. The companies that manufacture them have to take the loss for the unsold doses. If the public wants more doses made available each year then they will pay for that, one way or another. There is no other way to say this. The question is how? If the government were to offer to buy the unused doses this would help. The drawback is that the drug companies could not resist the idea of making 300 million doses each year of a vaccine that normally markets 30 million. Plus , since the government is buying, they would want twice as much for it.
Not to mention the money spent on the beltway bandits to "study the problem" for 3 years before anything is done.

If this years flu is worse than normal, then next years demand for vaccine will be higher. But if next years flu is mild, then vaccine demand in following years will plummet. I do not see any solution to this problem. It is human nature.

Still, forcing some overproduction of vaccine would be a good thing. As long as it does not become a taxpayer ripoff to support drug companies. I do not begrudge them their profits. But I will not support gravy trains.

There are still plenty of vaccines left over; however, it's of the nasal vaccine (Flumist), not the shot. I've read reports that 4 million doses of Flumist were produced, but only 250,000 given. Why so many left over? The cost is $80 per dose (and children 5-9 who never had the flu vaccine need 2 doses the first season), most insurances don't cover it, the only people who can receive it must be healthy (no chronic medical conditions) and between the ages of 5-49.

I don't agree that the government should be involved in buying back unused doses. If we vaccinate those at high risk, and there's enough left over for those that are healthy, that's fine. As for the shortage now, I think the proper analogy would be that those seeking the flu vaccine now are similar to those who live on the coast, and know that a hurricane is coming soon, but choose not to buy any plywood until right before the storm,and by that time it's sold out.

"It would be helpful to know how many children have died of the flu in past years. Then useful comparisons can be made."

Well, you can't track mortality by age with this resource, but this is what I use for info:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

Note in the chart here:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2003-2004/images/bigpi48.gif

as of Week 40 we were BELOW the seasonal baseline.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2003-2004/images/picILI48.gif

This chart shows that the situation changed- lots and lots of visits to E-rooms for flu-like symptoms. The chart shows the past two seasons, too. The increase in ER visits could be because of an unusually severe strain, or newscasters urging people to get medical help fast once symptoms show up. Unfortunately we won't be able to separate the two effects until we have more detailed mortality stats- because visits to E-rooms are voluntary and reporting is not required, but people dying is a required report and not usually voluntary.

Could someone who knows HTML better than me post the graphs in the thread?