Why mall Santas do need the H1N1 vaccine.

[indigo girl]

...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."

For the full story: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/24/swine-flu-vaccine-mall-santa-opinions-columnists-trevor-butterworth.html

(hat tip crofsblog)

[itsmejuli]

I'm on an H1N1 vaccination team with the county health department. We're seeing a lack of interest or perhaps lack of understanding of the importance of vaccination both in the schools and in the public health department.

Not all of the children are getting vaccinated and many of the parents who wanted their kids vaccinated didn't complete the forms correctly so we were unable to vaccinate those children.

This week our schools are out. We geared up at the local health departments and were ready for the kids and high risk group of people to come in and get vaccinated. Far fewer than were expected turned out.

It could be that people weren't aware that we had the vaccine in limited supply. We'll see what happens when we complete the school vaccinations and open up the vaccine for the general public at the clinics.

Its been an interesting experience so far for me as a new LPN. I'm gaining an interest in nursing in infectious disease and public health.