LOL… not with U but at U!
I like comedy, so thanks for jumping into this thread and making my monday morning a little lighter this week.
Oh no, a potential national emergency is on our hands (literally, eh?)
I thought conservatives were the only people who were aloud to exagerate and invent new facts in order to inspire fear and angst?
man, old people are just gonna die soon anyways, and 99.9% of people with hiv are immoral scumbags who’s time is extremely limmited anyways. Old people who get the vaccine, and people with aids who get vaccinated, are dicks. Save the vaccine for the healthy, moral, productive members of society.
I think GreenJT’s post sums up the facts pretty well. What we are talking about here is flu vaccine. There will still be 54 million doses available. Also keep in mind ALL child vaccine comes from Sanofi-Aventis(the French company). The populations really at risk is the elderly, immune comprimised and those exposed on a regular basis (ie health care workers). The rest of us can prevent flu and other infectious diseases by simple good hygiene. Wash your hands a little more often you would be surprised by how much that prevents common colds/flu etc. Blamming the government of the US is not only rediculous but wrong. The gov does buy some flu vaccine but the vast majority is bought by private corporations.
GreenJT is right that high margins on drugs pay for future cures. Anyone that doesn’t think controlled (lowered) drug prices won’t hurt innovation is either naive or does not understand how drug companies work.
JW
Knock on wood!!! I haven’t had the flu in about 8 years. Getting enough sleep and keeping my hands and face clean has gotten me past it many years. Now pool colds, that’s another story, I wish they had a shot for that.
jaretj
Oh no, a potential national emergency is on our hands (literally, eh?)
I thought conservatives were the only people who were aloud to exagerate and invent new facts in order to inspire fear and angst?
nah, we pinko-liberal commie faggots are allowed to do it as well! sniffle sniffle cough cough. anyway the wife works at a community health center in an hiv program and the whole lack of vaccine is a little scary for us and her clients…the gov’t screwed up which is not to say any one wouldn’t have, but the pieces of the puzzle all seem to fit together and just because the jerk is paranoid doesn’t mean the suede-denim secret police ain’t after my uncool niece.
The fact of the matter is, probably several thousand more people will die than if there had been 100 million (or more) doses to go around. Tens of thousands more will be hospitalized. That’s not fear-mongering, its the situation.
Bush didn’t cause this situation, Clinton didn’t…but no one has done anything to improve it. We give subsidies to tobacco farmers. We need a subsidy (or outright 100% cost-plus-profit reimbursement) and lawsuit protection for vaccine makers. The benefits of a $10 dose so outweigh the costs of the sicknesses they prevent. We can spend multi-billions for all sorts of things…how about spending more than our current $50 million on flu vaccine-related stuff.
And while I agree most “healthy” people shouldn’t get the shot this year, and I won’t be, my daughter just turned two. Her doctor wanted to give her the shot a few weeks ago, but couldn’t because she has an egg allergy. The best way to protect her I was told is for her parents and brother to get the shots. I was planning to through work, now I can’t. So this lack of preparation on the vaccine front means I have to hope everyone around is more vigilant than ever re: washing hands, etc. An investment by our government of a few hundred million dollars would ease these risks.
We’re going to have at least 54 million does of flu vaccine in the country this year.
As recently as 10 years ago, less than 20 million people in the US got flu shots.
I don’t seem to remember piles of coffins lining the streets in 1994.
Everyone needs to RELAX. Stress can increase your chances of getting sick.
The fact of the matter is, probably several thousand more people will die than if there had been 100 million (or more) doses to go around. Tens of thousands more will be hospitalized. That’s not fear-mongering, its the situation.
Bush didn’t cause this situation, Clinton didn’t…but no one has done anything to improve it. We give subsidies to tobacco farmers. We need a subsidy (or outright 100% cost-plus-profit reimbursement) and lawsuit protection for vaccine makers. The benefits of a $10 dose so outweigh the costs of the sicknesses they prevent. We can spend multi-billions for all sorts of things…how about spending more than our current $50 million on flu vaccine-related stuff.
And while I agree most “healthy” people shouldn’t get the shot this year, and I won’t be, my daughter just turned two. Her doctor wanted to give her the shot a few weeks ago, but couldn’t because she has an egg allergy. The best way to protect her I was told is for her parents and brother to get the shots. I was planning to through work, now I can’t. So this lack of preparation on the vaccine front means I have to hope everyone around is more vigilant than ever re: washing hands, etc. An investment by our government of a few hundred million dollars would ease these risks.
The prescription drug Tamaflu has IIRC been reported to have a prophalatic effect in adults. You may want to find out about using this if people around your daughter start contracting the flu. Obviously your doctor would know more about this than I do.
the astonishing part is that the problems were already known in August:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/3604230.stm
but of course no-one in this administration was paying any attention.
Doug,
Don’t let your hatred of Bush get in the way of the facts. The process was set in motion just after last years flu season ended as stated above. The lead time is many months so anything in August was too late. And what exactly was “this administration” going to do about a contaminated plant in another country? If the US had a few less trial lawyers maybe we could actually manufacture some vaccine in this country.
Dave
Dave, the Bush administration is so evil that it probably created the flu to kill old people before they could vote against it.
pinko-liberal commie faggots
That would have been a much more eye-catching username than “jerk”.
Tom, a healthy stud like you must wait his turn.
Dave from VA
The military pretty much all gets their flu shots. The irresponsible panic-mongers on this forum need to cool their jets. There’s a lot of lfu vaccine out there, it’s being given to priority persons as defined by the CDC, health care personnel, old people, children, etc,…and most relatively healthy people who don’t get the vaccine will be just fine. It’s not like there’s going to be a nationwide deadly flu epidemic. Flu vaccine hasn’t been around forever, and the flu isn’t AIDS or the plague. Most people who are so up in arms now never gave a second thought to the vaccine until they had something to bitch about.
According to the Illinois Dept. of Public Health, in the 1994-95 flu season there were 68 million doses of flu vaccine avail., about double the number from '91-'92. Only 35% of Medicare patients got the shot in '94-'95 (10 million people).
In 1994, it is estimated that 69.3 million days of work were missed due to the flu. $5 billion was spent on treating it. So…no piles of coffins in the street, but huge expenses.
I’m not saying run screaming into the streets because of the shortage. Comments like “(the) Flu vaccine hasn’t been around forever, and the flu isn’t AIDS or the plague” misses the point.
If there was always 100+ million doses given, thousands of fewer people would die and tens of thousands of fewer people would be hospitalized. There are huge costs in treating the problem. If we could spend a few hundred million dollars and save several billion in health care costs and a couple of thousand lives (yes, mostly those annoying older people), seems like it is money better spent than on say a rover on Mars or Homeland Security money in South Dakota.
If there is a good role for government, it is to address such problems/issues. I haven’t seen that done effectively.
the “it hasn’t affected me/we got by in the old days” argument is a weak one. Given that logic, why have seatbelts, baby car seats, etc.
I sympathize with your situation, I am in a similar one. My daughter is asthmatic and has a mildly compromised immune system. She has had the flu shot in the past and has not done well with it. Last year, our Doctor reccommended a homeopathic flu prevention made by a French Company, Dolisos, for my daughter. I was a bit apprehensive, but did some research and decided to use it for her. Long story short, my 17 year old son got the flu the end of October. He was given Tamiflu within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms and finished the full prescription. He was sick for about one week. Six weeks later he relapsed and was sick for 3 weeks. He missed his mid-term exams at school, never left the house his entire school break and was unable to participate in our holiday celebrations. My daughter did not get the flu, despite being in very close contact with her brother. Needless to say, she is using this again this season.
Don’t forget, 20-40 million people died in the flu pandemic of 1918-1919.
"Don’t forget, 20-40 million people died in the flu pandemic of 1918-1919. "
And? I’m assuming doctors know a little bit more now than they did 100years ago.
You’re right. But I don’t want my message to be dismissed as “the sky is falling!!!”. I believe when pandemics like the 1918 one have hit, it is because of a certain very powerful strain. My relatively uneducated guess is that even if there were flu shots back then, that strain was new and may not (probably not) have been one of the strains included in the vaccine.
My point is that having a system in place to have flu shots avail. to anyone who wants them, even if it costs the U.S. a couple of hundred million dollars and most years results in excess supply, would more than pay for itself through reduced health care costs (much of which the govt. is picking up as well…Medicare and Medicaid).