While some medical offices are scrambling to secure enough staffers to handle the vaccination appointments and dissemination, other doctors are going on record in emails and in conversations with patients to say that they are not concerned about their patients getting the shots (or mist, as the case may be). Some doctors are advising that people, particularly parents, investigate several sources for the vaccine so that they do not rely solely upon their own physician's supply.
The World Health Organization has endorsed the safety of the vaccine and declared it the most important tool in putting an end to the pandemic, saying that everyone who can be inoculated should be.
The question of whether or not people should get the vaccine is met by the logistical uncertainty of how much will be distributed and which states, agencies, schools, and medical offices will have access to it. While it has been publicized that health care workers and people in high risk categories will have priority, there are still many questions about who falls in to those categories and if and when others will even have a chance to choose whether to be immunized or not.
The CDC reports a goal of producing 195 million to 250 million doses of the immunization. By the time the first batch was released Monday, 62 states and local jurisdictions had already placed orders for 170 million doses.
As a parent, I am paying close attention with concern that my child will not have an opportunity to be vaccinated. As the first wave of vaccines were being sent out yesterday, we were in an annual appointment with his pediatrician, who told us that he falls outside the priority parameters. Although the news reports indicate that children aged 6 months through 24-years old will be considered first for vaccination, our pediatrician told us (and a visit to the CDC website confirmed) that the age range is actually only up to 4-years old (unless children have a chronic medical condition). She said they had no indication of how much they would receive or if it would be available to that office at all.
For now, that leaves us as it seems to leave much of the nation -- in a holding pattern to see if the H1N1 immunization will be available to us. That doesn't even cover the question of how the shots may or may not contain the virus or if, due to a two-week incubation period, it will protect the patients who do get it.
I am personally in favor of the vaccine and will get it as a safety measure to protect both my son and me from the swine flu. Honestly, I don't have much faith that we will be in line for it and will have to rely on the old-fashioned seasonal flu prevention methods to keep ourselves healthy this season.
If you have access to the swine flu vaccination for yourself or your kids, will you have it? What is your doctor recommending and is it available in your area?
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[photo via Yahoo! News]
