Squeal like a pig!

[Bird]

Jim, I saw a news article about Walgreen's and a lot of places out of the seasonal flu vaccine. Apparently more people getting the shots this year. But my doctor still had a sign on the door Wednesday that they have the vaccine for $25. Our county health department started giving the shots on September 9, so we got ours the first day.

 

[Bird]

My wife has COPD and is a breast cancer survivor, so her medical oncologist had told her to get the swine flu shot as soon as possible. So she's called his office and the county health department a couple of times when no one had any of the vaccine. However, yesterday the lady at the county health department said they would be giving the shots in a local recreation center today from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. We got there about 10:20 a.m. and I'd guess there were about a hundred people in line. They had a deputy sheriff and two local police officers there, in case of trouble, I guess, but everyone in the crowd was well behaved. The weather was great today, but the lines were indoors anyway. My wife got at the end of the line and I stayed out of the line; figured if there was a shortage of the vaccine, there are lots of people at higher risk than I am. I didn't count the number of people doing the paperwork, but they had 8 people giving the shots, so the line moved pretty quickly when they started. Then my wife got her shot, came out and told me the lady said I should get one, too. The deputy told me they had 2,000 doses for today, so I went on and got one, too.

The long and short of it was that they were giving the shots to anyone who showed up, and about noon, the line was down to less than a dozen people, although they expected a bigger crowd later in the day.

Hopefully the vaccine is getting more plentiful everywhere.

 

[jinman]

Hopefully the vaccine is getting more plentiful everywhere.

Bird, good for you and Margaret! I've been trying to get just the normal annual flu shot from my doctor in Bowie, but nobody has any vaccine there except maybe one place. They keep saying they expect it any day, but it doesn't appear.

Yesterday, I had to have some lab work done at the VA community based outpatient clinic in Bridgeport. I was sure I could get the shot there and figured I might be lucky and get the H1N1 also. Nope! None of either vaccine. They had the same story as in Bowie. They expect it any day.

I guess this is what you have to expect when the gov't gets involved in healthcare and specifies who does and who does not get treatment.

 

[IslandTractor]

I guess this is what you have to expect when the gov't gets involved in healthcare and specifies who does and who does not get treatment.

That's certainly taking it a bit far. It is government agencies that have raised awareness of this issue and have fought a long battle to get the public to take influenza vaccination seriously. It is government that tracks the viruses, determines the most likely epidemic strains and organizes the vaccine manufacturers to produce the appropriate type of vaccine. It was government that fronted the 500 million bucks to the vaccine companies so they would make a H1N1 vaccine at short notice. It was government that created a system to rapidly and efficiently distribute the vaccine in a fair manner (without people bidding up the price in a supply and demand scenario).

Where government failed was in convincing the H1N1 virus itself to grow faster and as this particular strain seems to grow about half as fast as the more typical influenza strains and as this vaccine was produced in record time, there has been a short fall. Blaming government for slow production of vaccine this year is like blaming Washington for drought.

 

[Bird]

Jim, I thought maybe the vaccine was getting plentiful enough. The Denton County "clinic" yesterday was in the recreation center in Lewisville and the deputy told me they were going to have another one in the C. H. Collins center in Denton Tuesday.

And then this morning, I just read this story in the Dallas Morning News.

Of course they don't mention Denton County, but it sure appears that a lot of vaccine has been distributed, but I guess more people are wanting it this year than in the past.

 

[Bird]

Blaming government for slow production of vaccine this year is like blaming Washington for drought.

Yes, you're right in that statement, and I pretty well agree with the rest of what you posted, with some exceptions. We haven't posted everything that's been in the news lately, but the "government blame" is not with the production, but with the distribution of the vaccine. And yes, I realize it's a massive, complex logistical problem, but one for profit private company in Dallas County got one of the largest and earliest shipments. And they were dispensing it to anyone with the money instead of the high risk groups.

And now, as you see from mine and Jim's posts, as well as the newspaper story, we still have some places dispensing it to anyone who shows up while others don't have it even for the highest risk groups. Yesterday, there were lots of little kids getting the shots, and I deliberately waited and wasn't going to get the shot myself while others more at risk needed it, until they said they had plenty.

 

[IslandTractor]

I don't know that the government allocation of vaccine is the only way the vaccine companies are selling. It is possible that some private healthcare organization decided last Spring to place an order and therefore would have received it by now. Again, I don't know. I find it hard to believe though that some private group got ahead of the line that CDC established for distribution. If anything the folks at CDC are overly attentive to the needs of the public clinics and don't give the time of day to private clinics. All the vaccine the government is distributing goes through that CDC channel.

I understand Jinman is just blowing off steam and that it is always popular to blame the government for anything that goes wrong but this H1N1 business is actually a pretty good example of how government can work effectively for our public health. The flu season typically starts later than this and the CDC and manufacturers usually have another six months of lead time to prepare. It is pretty remarkable that they were able to get any vaccine produced this quickly and it shows good government planning. For example, to produce the bulk of the vaccine you need fertilized eggs. The farmers need to know many months in advance if you need more than the usual number of fertilized eggs. The government understood this several years ago and established a program where they pay farmers to produce lots of fertilized eggs with some sort of subsidy just in case this type of H1N1 situation occurred. Without that program we would have precisely no H1N1 vaccine right now as the vaccine companies had never bothered to develop such a "wasteful" subsidy program for farmers.

We all know the government screws up big time quite frequently. This H1N1 thing is not an example of that however.

 

[Bird]

I'm afraid the distribution system isn't exactly what you think it is, at least if the news media is telling us the truth. I don't know of the vaccine companies selling any of the H1N1 vaccine except through the CDC distribution channels. And the CDC is leaving it to the states to make the determination and distribution. Naturally the state says the private company that got ahead of others lied to get the vaccine and the company denies lying (according to the news reports, and does that surprise anyone?). So it may be different in your state from what it is in Texas. The individual states decide how to distribute the vaccine, then when the state sends it to a county health department in Texas, that county department determines how they will distribute it. For Example: in Dallas County, they recently distributed 100 doses to each of every Walmart pharmacy in the county, plus Walgreen's and some other pharmacies. They haven't done that in Denton County, but are giving the shots themselves.

So, yes, the distribution is controlled by the government, but the "government" includes federal, state, and county authorities.

 

[IslandTractor]

You are correct. States are different and the CDC channel ends when the vaccine reaches state authorities. In Massachusetts we have very little private vaccine as the state health department purchases all vaccines needed for children (the vast majority of vaccines overall) and distributes them. That same state health department deals with CDC and handles both the H1N1 and routine influenza vaccines. There is very little "private" channel for vaccines here as a consequence.

I guess there are some advantages to living in Taxachusetts after all.

 

[jinman]

. . . It was government that created a system to rapidly and efficiently distribute the vaccine in a fair manner (without people bidding up the price in a supply and demand scenario).

. . .Blaming government for slow production of vaccine this year is like blaming Washington for drought.

Perhaps you misread my complaint. I clearly disagree with you that the method of distribution is efficient and fair. By who's standards? In past years I could get the annual flu shot almost anywhere. Why is that immunization not available this year? Must I search through every remote clinic and drug store in the county to see who has vaccine? That seems far less than rapid or efficient. I'm not carping about H1N1 production, though I see public health officials on the news nightly saying there are doses available, but they are being rationed to "high risk" folks like the homeless and poor who have no job and have time to stand in line for hours on end to get a shot.

I know this is a special case this year with H1N1 and increased demand for the normal flu shot vaccines as well. It's my feeling that this is an expected outcome when government becomes even more involved in the production and distribution of all medicines. I don't mean for this to be political, it's just the quality of decisions and process seems to be hampered. Those we have chosen and paid to succeed are somehow failing us. Can we agree that there's a problem needing to be addressed? I don't think you are completely happy with this system either.