Last August UK officials, with the same information the US officials had, decided something had to be done in case the Chiron supplies, 14% of UK supplies, went belly up. The US officials decided to believe Chiron and gamble 48% of their supplies on an assurance that everything would turn out fine despite some worrying set backs. When October 5th arrived, the British authorities pulled the plug on the Chiron, Liverpool, supplies. US authorities were caught out - nothing had been done in advance, the country had allowed itself to get into this situation. [snip] Even without this crisis, the UK authorities have always had a situation where they can fall back on six or seven suppliers that have been pre-approved by UK authorities. The US, on the other hand, only has two - one of which has let them down. Had the US had more pre-approved suppliers, had the US started to do something about this problem last August when alarm bells were ringing, had the US…….? This is what many Americans are now starting to ask. The American Health Dept saw no reason last August to do anything, says their spokesman Tony Jewell. Americans hear him and ask, so why did the British have a reason, you both worked on the same information, didn't you? America's only other supplier, Aventis, may have upped supplies if they had been asked in advance - say last August - said an Aventis spokesman. But no one from the US approached them on this matter, not till after Oct 5.
That's not entirely true. A vaccine causes you to build up antibodies. While you are doing that, it puts a strain on your immune system (or, wages a war on you body if you have an auto-immune disease). During that time you are more prone to catching a virus because your body is busy building anti-bodies to fight off whatever the vaccine was. So, during that time, if a different flu strain comes through, you're most likely going to get it and have a harder time fighting it off because your body is still working on coping with the vaccine.
OMG! Don't try and put reason into this! You should just *know* that a new more "respectable" government will do everything right with their "PLAN".
With such a high level of competition and so much presidential encouragement, it was not surprising that Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, one of the more garrulous members of the Cabinet, entered the contest this week by claiming that the shortage of flu vaccine "is not a health crisis." Tell that to the 36,000 people who die annually in the United States, or the 200,000 who are hospitalized, from causes associated with influenza. Those are yearly averages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as reported by the Government Accountability Office, the agency formerly known as the General Accounting Office. Formal name changes aside, it's the same GAO that has warned repeatedly over the last four years about the perilous state of vaccine production and distribution. Academics and health professionals outside the government have been as pointed in their periodic alerts. The government response has been anemic. In May 2001, four months into the Bush administration, Janet Heinrich, director of GAO's health care division, testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. The title of her statement could not have been clearer: "Steps Are Needed to Better Prepare for Possible Future Shortages." Heinrich's testimony was an eerily exacting guide to what is now afoot. "Manufacturing difficulties could occur in the future and again illustrate the fragility of current methods to produce a new vaccine every year," she said. "Compounding the problem is that when the supply is short, there is no system to ensure that high-risk people have priority for receiving flu shots."
They played a bit of Kerry's speech about this issue today on NPR. As a Kerry supporter, I was PISSED that he gave this speech in Florida to a bunch of old people. Don't accuse Bush and Cheney of using scare tactics if you're going to give this kind of speech, OK JOHN? DO YOU HEAR ME?