Vaccination vascillation: Lenny Bruce used to have a line he would scream out in the middle of his act: “We’re all gonna die!” While the essential truth of that statement hasn’t changed, if the avian flu pandemic becomes a reality, some — scratch that — a lot of us are going to die sooner than a few others.
The National Journal interviewed Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Health and Human Services Department, about the nation’s vaccine supply. Overall, the news ain’t good.
According to Gellin, we can’t make enough vaccine right now to combat an avian-flu pandemic:
Because a pandemic will be caused by a virus that we’ve not experienced before, a pandemic vaccine is likely to be a much higher dose to achieve the immune response needed for protection. In studies that [the National Institutes of Health] conducted last year, we were sobered to learn that the vaccine dose was six times higher than what is in our seasonal flu shot and that two doses were required.
‘At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year.’ — Dr. Bruce GellinWe estimate that if we were to ask Sanofi to dedicate their facilities entirely to H5N1 vaccine, they could produce approximately 30 million to 40 million doses of H5N1 vaccine in a year. At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year. Of course, this would also mean that the company would have to stop making next year’s flu vaccine in order to do this.
So how do we decide who gets the 15-20 million doses in the event the pandemic starts whipping up on us? Well, if it happens under the current president’s administration, poor people and people of color can forget it. Ditto old folks, gays and illegal immigrants. Here’s my prediction of how the flow chart of who would get the vaccine and in what order might look like:
1. First responders and all medical personnel
2. First family (extended), cabinet members and West Wing retainers
3. Four members of the Supreme Court
4. Most of the Senate
5. A little over half of the House of Representatives
6. White House press corps
7. “Wall Street Journal” Washington Bureau
8. All employees of Fox News Network, select CNN anchors and Bob Woodward
9. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell
10. Jackie Mason and Dennis Miller
11. Tony Blair and Gerald Ford
12. Straight military personnel deployed in Iraq
Have an idea of who else would be on the list? Leave us a comment!
well i think with that list, you know that all the people of the senate are going to include their family. you can also include in the (extended family of all the friends and friends of friends of all elected officials. AKA anyone that has donated XXX.XX amount of dollars. So after all that, there will be like 5 doses left for the ‘public.’
so to conclude, we are all screwed. i hope your immune system is good!!
Boards of Directors, Halliburton and Bechtel.
Bird Flu and Mad Cow are to small chicken farmers and cattle ranchers as leaky fuel tanks were to locally owned gas stations. Just another way for multinational corporate owners to push the little guys out of the business.
Maybe, just maybe, you’re wondering how come you’re so privileged as to receive this communiqué. Well, answer is simple, thanks to http://www.google.com and through the search words “blog” and “‘Lenny Bruce'”, I found the u.r.l to your website.
After perusing your website, I conjectured you’d be interested in my post titled, “sweetest nookie”. In this post, you’ll find some notions about how Lenny, were he around today, might comment about the recent kerfuffle in the Middle East.
Anyway, you’ll find the hyperlink to the post just below
toodles
http://hewhoisknownassefton.blogspot.com/2006/08/sweetest-nookie.html