Effects of Flu Shot Shortage
Everybody appears to be upset over the flu shot shortage. However, one very critical fact appears to be overlooked. Flu shots are prepared from the previous year’s strains. Most major flu epidemics are a result of a new, mutated strain. Having a flu shot will not protect people against the new strain. Most people, if they have had previous flu shots, are immune to the previous strains. As there was no major epidemic last year, this year’s formulation is nothing more than a rehash of the prior year’s and is of little benefit. People need to know this.
Dr. Elliott Brender
Villa Park
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The flu vaccine shortage -- unfortunate as it may be -- provides an opportunity to find out exactly how effective a flu vaccination is. Since there isn’t enough for everyone who wants it, the doses available could be allocated on a random basis, and then vaccinated and unvaccinated people could be followed up carefully to determine any difference in incidence of respiratory or other illnesses. We would learn the efficacy of the flu vaccination program and see just how much bang society gets for its buck.
Roy M. Pitkin
La Quinta
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My husband and I are senior “seniors.” We are not physically able to stand for the six hours needed to get a flu shot this year. Once again, one wonders about the priorities and competence of the Bush administration.
Ila Jean Harris
San Dimas
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The Centers for Disease Control website states that approximately 200,000 people are hospitalized with flu complications each year, with 36,000 deaths. This is as alarming as any terror alerts coming from our government. How about spending some of that Department of Homeland Security money to buy and ensure vaccinations in 2005? A country that can’t provide flu vaccine certainly can’t be serious about providing healthcare for all.
Bonnie Dezzutto
Long Beach
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In her article (Opinion, Oct. 17) on the avian flu, Wendy Orient reassures readers that the risk of a human pandemic is “slim” as long as flu strains don’t enter a “disease factory” like the crowded Army training camps that allowed the 1918 influenza to acquire deadly momentum. In fact, ideal disease factories are everywhere in South Asia: They are called slums. With population densities as high as 200,000 residents per square kilometer, they offer perfect environments for the evolution of flu virulence. The neglected public health of Third World cities has become a deadly menace to the entire world.
Mike Davis
Professor of history
UC Irvine
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Re “Prices Inflated for Scarce Flu Vaccine,” Oct. 14: It is indeed reprehensible that these distributors would put their desire for profits above the value of human lives. However, can anyone tell me how this is basically any different from the big drug companies charging exorbitant prices for a wide variety of drugs necessary to preserve the health, and even the lives, of tens of millions of Americans? Again, profits are more important than human lives.
Robert Meade
San Gabriel
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Your suggestion that the manufacture of flu vaccine be turned over to the government will seem sensible only to a socialist (editorial, Oct. 15). There is a shortage of flu vaccine because of the government, not in spite of it.
George W. Carlyle
Newport Beach
