My Xmas Rant

My wife heads up a branch of one of our local medical labs, so she's been exposed to the H1N1 virus since last September — i.e., she's been on the front lines meeting sick public. Today (technically, I'm writing this Dec. 2) she finally got FlüMiste^™ (or something) up her nose. A bit late, although nobody in Linn County should take the rap for what they didn't have and couldn't get.

Everyone alive today is descended from survivors of the 1918 H1N1 Spanish flu pandemic (20 million dead), the 1957 H2N2 Asian flu (2 million dead), and the 1968 H3N2 Hong Kong flu pandemic (1 million dead), plus the various H1N1 mutations circulating since 1977 — survivors, that is, either by dumb luck, immunization or sufficient natural immune reponse to fight off the disease and its complications. Because there's something we can do about it, immunization factors large.

That said, the production and logistics, favoritism and irrationality in the distribution scheme for H1N1 immunization drugs is a bit weird. I'm not sure the H1N1 pandemic ranks with Katrina, but if this is an example of  "public be damned" free market economics, somebody's means of non-production needs to be nationalized.

Here's what I want for Xmas. I want my daughter immunized. → [Update 12/3] Might happen. There's another clinic scheduled to begin next week.