Ind. doctor among 1st to get swine flu vaccination

Gregory Dworkin is the chief of pediatric pulmonology and medical director of the Pediatric Inpatient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Conn. He is the founding editor of Flu Wiki, a Web site about flu and other health issues.
"I worry that those who need the vaccine the most (pregnant women, children, those with high risk conditions, and health care workers) will be slow to accept and ask for the vaccine. This may be for a variety of reasons, including fear of a “new rushed” shot (it’s similar to the standard flu shot with the new virus swapped in), fear of getting the flu from the vaccine (that can’t happen with the shot; unlike the nasal spray for healthy people between 2 and 49, the shot contains an inactive virus), a habit of getting flu vaccines (the baseline immunization rate in a typical year for some high risk groups is pretty low — 8 percent for pregnant women, less than 30 percent for children with asthma, less than 50 percent for health care workers). The rate of flu vaccination is much better for the elderly, but that’s not who we are targeting with the swine flu vaccine."


Robert Blendon is a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy Kennedy School of Government and the School of Public Health.
"But in a survey conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, we found reasons to worry about how many people would get the vaccine: only 40 percent of adults and 51 percent of parents said they were absolutely certain they would get the vaccine for themselves or their children."

i watched this on the news this morning. just out of curiousity, why are they starting out HCW's with the nasal mist vaccine with the live virus?