Copyright © 2004 The Quad-City Times | www.QCTimes.com
Flu shot shortage shows the need to reform
Posted on 11/15/2004 11:08:06 AM PST by newgeezer
Copyright © 2004 The Quad-City Times | www.QCTimes.com
Flu shot shortage shows the need to reform
Toward the end of the campaign, President Bush offered his small variation on JFK’s famous line: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can not do for your country.
“My call to our fellow Americans is, if you’re healthy, if you’re younger, don’t get a flu shot this year.”
I have followed the patriotic edict to go unarmed into this flu season. In fact, unlike certain members of the Congress who shall remain nameless, I have no choice but to follow it.
At the same time, I have been collecting various little anecdotes for The Flu Story 2004.
Take the assorted elders in New Jersey who celebrated their vaccinations as if they’d won the lottery. In fact, they had won a lottery.
If we are lucky, if the flu season is mild and the crick don’t rise, this may not be a disaster. But for the moment, we have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rationing the last 10 million doses and we have Illinois and New York City independently ordering its own vaccine from Europe.
Eery American is getting a chance to see what life’s like for people without health care insurance and just how precarious the health care system really is.
The strain of flu that is coming our way has been dubbed by one reporter as the Free Market Flu. The entire debacle comes from the fact that preventing the flu isn’t as profitable as, say, treating erectile dysfunction. The major American drug companies, who continuously tell us that their profits are for our benefit, don’t do flu vaccines anymore.
For some years, flu prevention has been outsourced without oversight.
Chiron Corp., one of the vaccine manufacturers, had worried the FDA as long ago as 1999, but it was the Brits who blew the whistle on them in October when this year’s batch of vaccines was contaminated. We were left dependent — mon dieu! — on a French company, Aventis Pasteur.
As James Morone, a political scientist at Brown University says, “If there were a sudden run on watches or sofas it wouldn’t be a problem, but health care can’t work that way.”
Instead of sofas and watches, it might be life and death. About 36,000 people died from the flu last year and that was when vaccine was available.
After 9/11 with all the talk of bioterrorism there was the beginning of a dialogue about strengthening the public health system. But today we rarely talk about the basics, like vaccines, as a public good.
Americans have long been told that national health care would mean long lines, rationing and second-class medicine. Despite spending more of our gross national product on health care than any other country, we rank 29th in life expectancy, right between Slovenia and Portugal.
Maybe it takes the Free Market Flu to remind us that sometimes we need a public health system as much as we need a fire department or a military.
For the moment, however, a casino in Las Vegas has generously donated its 5,000 doses to the local health department.
Meanwhile back home, I think I will tie a patriotic yellow ribbon around a great big pot of chicken soup.
Contact Ellen Goodman at ellengoodman@globe.com.
Copyright © 2002 The Quad-City Times
That's true, in 2003 there was more supply than demand and 3-4 million doses were discarded -- but there was also nearly twice as much supply in 2003 compared to this year.
That's essentially correct. However, an article in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago indicated that many drug companies will get back in when new gene technology makes the egg-based production method obsolete -- and that might happen in only 4-5 years.
but there was also nearly twice as much supply in 2003 compared to this year.<<<
That is my point. Last year, as in most years, the flu shot was OVER-SUPPLIED.
In 2004, we probably got exactly as much as we would have used without the "shortage". If all the vaccine would have been viable, we probably would have thrown out at least 1/2 of it again.
Hey Ellen, you moroness: stay out of dr's offices where the sick congregate, wash your hands with anti-bacterial soap frequently, and stop picking your nose. You'll survive, bimbo.
I've seen the Canadian system, and I think this is a foretaste of a government run system. Politicians pay attention to whatever is sexy at the moment and don't like oversight much. So, they don't keep up with things. Surely, in this time when we are finding we must beef up our national security and intelligence we don't need to give those old farts in the Senate more authority over something they know nothing about. They have more than enough to do.
Exactly!
LOL! I am still laughing!
Hey not only that, but how about suing attorneys for undermining a business??? Let the doctors get their malpractice insurance money back from the attorneys, juries and the judges.
Me too, sl! LOL!
Of course, she can't be bothered to lay the blame for this flu shot shortage where it belongs, right at the feet of Clinton and the Democrats who make it totally unprofitable for American flu shot manufacturers to continue to make it here so it left America vulnerable to shortages.
Who needs the flu when you have Ellen Goodman to induce vomiting?
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