Serious? Well, Then...
Everywhere in the world there is a critical shortage of the vaccine against the H1N1 virus. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are working furiously to produce sufficient vaccines to serve the needs of countries around the world. In the general atmosphere of media-induced panic aided by this new influenza strain's peculiar behaviour in the human body - striking dead the hale and the young as well as the immune-impaired and the elderly - epidemiologists are bemused and lend their confusion to the general air of uncertainty.
Laid aside is the logic of common sense that should soothe the nervousness of the public; that this H1N1 flu virus has not yet demonstrated it has the potential to wreak the full dimension of disaster on a worried public. Its trajectory, despite fears, has actually demonstrated it to be fairly innocuous - but for those unfortunates who have succumbed mortally to its sudden, mysterious ability to kill. Most people who have become infected have demonstrated relatively light symptoms, a minority briefly hospitalized.
Still, the worry is there, for governments to respond to the need to inoculate those demographics within their society most potentially at risk. Overlooked, for the most part, is the vulnerability of school-age children, since high priority groups only included children from six months to five years of age. Municipal and provincial health authorities have not quite risen to the task of functionally sound administration of the vaccines that they have received, although that appears to be improving.
But if health authorities are really serious about nipping parental fears as well as those of young people whom this virus, unlike other seasonal flu viruses, appears to target - and occasionally mortally - they should be acting, not reacting. It should be seen as a necessity to have roving clinics set up in schools, for the very precise and time-economizing purpose of vaccinating children and their teachers to halt the transmission of H1N1.
Given the reality that it is through the close physical proximity of the classroom that all such viruses have always been transmitted.
Laid aside is the logic of common sense that should soothe the nervousness of the public; that this H1N1 flu virus has not yet demonstrated it has the potential to wreak the full dimension of disaster on a worried public. Its trajectory, despite fears, has actually demonstrated it to be fairly innocuous - but for those unfortunates who have succumbed mortally to its sudden, mysterious ability to kill. Most people who have become infected have demonstrated relatively light symptoms, a minority briefly hospitalized.
Still, the worry is there, for governments to respond to the need to inoculate those demographics within their society most potentially at risk. Overlooked, for the most part, is the vulnerability of school-age children, since high priority groups only included children from six months to five years of age. Municipal and provincial health authorities have not quite risen to the task of functionally sound administration of the vaccines that they have received, although that appears to be improving.
But if health authorities are really serious about nipping parental fears as well as those of young people whom this virus, unlike other seasonal flu viruses, appears to target - and occasionally mortally - they should be acting, not reacting. It should be seen as a necessity to have roving clinics set up in schools, for the very precise and time-economizing purpose of vaccinating children and their teachers to halt the transmission of H1N1.
Given the reality that it is through the close physical proximity of the classroom that all such viruses have always been transmitted.
posted by Pieface @ 5:43 PM
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