Now that the flu vaccine issue has played itself out, it’s time for rational evaluation.
About 20 years ago, the Air Force, and I must assume the other services, made flu shots mandatory for all military personnel. Every year we all got the shot. Last year when I went to Kuwait, I had to get one again. Not once did I ever want one. I still don’t.
Now, perhaps the vaccines have improved to the point where they will protect me from every strain extant. I doubt it. But in the past, it was a crap shoot. Each year a new vaccine would be developed to counter what health officials (whoever they are) deemed were the most likely viruses to be prevalent that year. Most times they were about half right.
In other words, the chances were about 50-50 you might be protected from getting a flu virus if you had the vaccine.
Again, I don’t want to get the vaccine. If I get the flu, it lasts several days and I’m inconvenienced.
The very young and infirm are at some risk if they contract the flu, but the danger is more in not treating it than in contracting it. Getting the flu is not a death sentence. If you get the flu, you see a doctor and get some medication to relieve the symptoms and provide some relief. If you have major medical issues, more drastic action may be necessary.
For some reason, people who refuse to take an anthrax or smallpox shot are insistent that they get a flu shot. Folks, every new year brings a new flu vaccine. It is, by definition, experimental.
Our friends in MSM used to scoff at flu vaccine, and viewed it as a government program gone amok. Now they view it as a necessity which the government is responsible for furnishing. Next, they will insist it should be required of everyone. That may be good. Then the drug companies would know how much to make.
But it would be yet another personal freedom gone away.
Mark Steyn has more on flu vaccine, and Kerry’s plans for government health care, and the war.
Speaking of which, if there’s four words I never want to hear again, it’s “prescription drugs from Canada.” I’m Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they’re American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa’s price controls because it’s a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that’s going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren’t going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise — just as the Clinton administration’s intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.
As a Canadian, Mark knows of what he writes.
The vaccine crisis was bogus. I downloaded a presentation that was designed to teach health care professionals how to literally scare people into getting the shots. The loss of the vaccine from England cut the available supply to 50 million doses; last year, with no disruption in supply, only 35 million Americans got the shots.
The CDC holds patents on a number of vaccines. Is it coincidence that the number of recommended doses for kids under 2 has doubled to nearly 40 the last 20 years?
Comment by Derek Gilbert — October 27, 2004 @ 10:30 pm
International response to the distribution of a H2N2 influenza virus for laboratory testing: Risk considered low for laboratory workers and the public
Comment by Jill's Blog on the Flu Outbreak — April 13, 2005 @ 5:29 pm