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Swine flu response requires patience

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 30, 2009

After months of apocalyptic reports on the urgent threat of swine flu, people are getting used to living in quiet fear.

In those cities where folks have waited hours in line for shots, there has been little panic, and it has been good to see those who are not among the priority groups targeted for vaccination – pregnant women, children, those with chronic illnesses – often giving up their shots to those who are.

The planning for the pandemic has proven more than adequate. The federal Centers for Disease Control Web site describes the recommended protocols in great detail.

Unfortunately, the execution has not been what was promised.

The federal government originally predicted up to 120 million doses of vaccine would be ready by mid-October. As of now, the CDC says there are 22 million ready for shipment to health departments, hospitals and physicians across the country.

At All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg earlier this week, we spoke with nurses who received the seasonal flu shot – not the swine flu shot — that day because doses had run short a few weeks earlier. They had no idea when the H1N1 shot would arrive.

The same can be said for many primary care physicians and pediatricians – the providers from whom most of us get our seasonal vaccinations.

Thus the understandable frustration of patients who have underlying conditions and parents of children who are more susceptible to this new strain of H1N1.

In Hillsborough and surrounding counties the schools have plans in place to inoculate kids. They've started, but the process is slow because there's not enough vaccine to go around.

Blame for the delays has been placed in part on the way the vaccine is made. The process depends on reproducing the virus in millions of chicken eggs, and the new H1N1 strain is slow-growing.

And because vaccines are not particularly lucrative, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to spend the money on new technologies. The delay, then, should serve as a wake-up call for lawmakers who could use a little of that stimulus money to develop vaccine production technologies that can more quickly respond to emerging diseases.

Moreover, this inability on the part of the government to adequately predict the vaccine program should give those who would turn oversight of the health care system to the federal government something to think about.

So far, despite the delays, there is no reason to panic. Most of the more than 1,000 people who have died from complications of swine flu had underlying medical issues. And it's worth remembering that the common seasonal flu usually kills about 36,000 people. The new virus does not appear to be worse than the old.

But it is a new virus, and no one knows with any certainty how dangerous it is or could become. People should remain patient as the pharmaceutical companies continue to build up supply and doses are distributed, and we should all pray the virus doesn't mutate to something more virulent.

Delay would not be tolerated, nor panic contained, if a more deadly strain emerges.

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