avocado8

The Flu: Who Knew?

I saw this interesting item on Suburban Guerrilla about the difference in the British and American responses to the Chiron debacle, but I wasn't sure how reliable the source was (especially given the dodgy editing, the lack of attribution, and the numerous server errors I got on my first visit to the site).

It seems the story's accurate, if the Washington Post is to be believed. What's interesting to me is that this could be yet another example of the Bush administration and its agencies being overly optimistic in the face of bad news, of hearing what they want to hear rather than preparing for a worst-case scenario, as the British did. [I do wonder whether the CDC would have been so optimistic under any administration, or just this one; how much influence does the administration have over the CDC, anyway? I know it has some, based on what happened—or didn't happen—in the early days of the AIDS crisis...]

On a related note, I saw an article in a local Lancaster County, PA paper about how many people are positively panicking about the vaccine shortage, harrassing local doctors and calling every medical-related agency and private firm in the area looking to get on a non-existent waiting list for a shot, and that several states are considering making it a crime to give a flu shot to a healthy, low-risk individual. Freaky. I feel kinda bad that I'm high-risk on two counts (asthma and pregnancy), and that I'll have to jump on the give-me-a-flu-shot-now bandwagon. :-/