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  Home Page » Opinion » Editorial » Pandemic Flu

Pandemic flu

Shortages demonstrate the U.S. was not ready

The U.S. government, along with other nations and the World Health Organization, has been preparing for pandemic respiratory disease for several years.

So far, they have had the time they needed. Avian influenza and SARS have not spread widely. H1N1, while infecting large numbers of people, has not yet been so widespread or severe as to overwhelm the health-care system. That is fortunate, because it turns out pandemic flu preparations have been inadequate.

Vaccine manufacturers – under contract by the government to respond to just such an outbreak – repeatedly have downgraded their estimates of how many doses of vaccine they could produce quickly. From an original prediction of 160 million doses by the end of October, those manufacturers now say they will be able to deliver about 28 million – not enough to immunize high-risk individuals against a virus that is sweeping rapidly across the country.

Despite rules designed to provide H1N1 vaccine first to those who need it most, stories abound about how people have managed to score a flu shot out of turn. Some have lied about their age, others about being pregnant or about having small children at home, and still others have faked underlying risk factors.

At the same time, others – most notably including medical personnel – have refused the vaccine, putting not only themselves but their patients at risk. The federal Centers for Disease Control and health-care professionals across the country have failed at the task of convincing people that getting the H1N1 shot is a good idea. Misinformation abounds, some of it closely tied to distrust of the government in general.

Many of the people susceptible to this flu may contract it before the vaccine becomes available to them anyway. But, as the saying goes, if this had been an actual emergency, a disease more severe than this one so far has been, that unwillingness to be vaccinated could have resulted in a large number of deaths, not only among those who refused the vaccine but among those who could not get it. The government needs to do a better job of convincing the public that its policies are the right ones.

And the private sector needs to do a better job of cooperating. Protective masks also are in short supply, even though that seems like a commodity that could be manufactured in large quantities and stockpiled by the federal government with relative ease. Who did not get the memo that masks would be in big demand, and why has production not been cranked up since H1N1 hit the news last spring? Shortly afterward, hand sanitizer was hard to find, but that market seems to have corrected itself, suggesting that other markets can, as well.

We knew something like this was coming; we had time to prepare. No plan is perfect, and no matter how much testing occurs, some flaws are apparent only when the system is under considerable stress. Make no mistake: This pandemic would have been worse without the steps that have been taken, and credit is due for that.

It still could get worse, though, and if it does not, it eventually will be followed by another serious disease to which few people are immune. We need to do better. We need to correct the problems being experienced now, refine the system and be really thankful that H1N1 has not been any worse, because the United States was not ready.