Why mall Santas do need the H1N1 vaccine.

...H1N1 didn't go and "behave in the way we told people a pandemic would behave," said McKenna. Its case fatality rate turned out to be low, even though it was highly transmissible. This meant that it could spread widely and rapidly but, for most people, end up being no worse (and possibly milder) than the seasonal flu.

The kicker is that the more the virus spreads, the more people who are particularly vulnerable to complications from H1N1 are likely to get it; hence, the perfect viral storm of kids lining up to sneeze on Santa (and on one another). Being a child or being rotund puts you in a high risk category for the virus: H1N1 has killed almost twice as many children in the first month of this year's flu season as the seasonal flu killed in an entire year during 2006-07, while being overweight or obese (a job requirement for Santa impersonators) increases susceptibility to respiratory infections. What appeared to be lame TV was, in fact, a perfect teaching moment about the risks of not getting vaccinated.

Instead, the H1N1 story has left people, "very confused and unclear whether they got it wrong or whether we told them badly," said McKenna. "Neither is true of course. It's more that we didn't tell them completely enough; though since for most of the past decade people haven't been very interested in flu, it is debatable whether they would have listened."