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With all the technological advances in modern medicine, it’s not supposed to be like this. How can something so essential be forgone, leaving millions around the globe helpless against an unseen enemy? More importantly, what are we to do without flu vaccines?
Each year, U.S. citizens alone lose millions of dollars in lost wages due to bouts with a perennial winter foe – the flu – according to the Center for Disease Control. This year, one can expect those losses to skyrocket as a direct result of this year’s flu vaccine shortage.
According to Scotsman.com, the reason the inoculation shortage is due to the Food and Drug Administration’s refusal to accept 48 million doses of “unsafe” Fluvirin from British manufacturer Chiron Corp., after learning of bacteria problems which occurred during the filling of the vials. The FDA has flat out refused to allow any of the potentially contaminated batches into the United States.
The 55 million remaining “clean” doses, from Chiron Corp. rival Aventis-Pasteur, are being allotted in an attempt to mete them out to those most at risk; the elderly and newborn babies, leaving the rest of us, literally, out in the cold.
Many local flu clinics have been cancelled indefinitely in the wake of the vaccine’s shortage, including the yearly flu clinic at Miller Drug. The owner of Miller Drug, Bernard “Bill” Miller, has a little spiel for those customers who call inferring about the availability of the flu.
“I tell them I haven’t had one, my mother who is 95 hasn’t had one, and my wife hasn’t had one.”
Miller’s seemingly blunt nature is indicative of the flu vaccine situation. The Brits messed up, and we have to pay the price with our health. Surely there must be some company must be foaming at the mouth, waiting to corner this market, right?
Wrong. There is no economic incentive for drug companies to pick up the slack and manufacture flu vaccines. The process is labor-intensive and not cost efficient, not to mention the limited timeframe in which to work.
Two years ago, drug industry giant Wyeth Pharmacueticals stopped making the vaccine after they had to trash 7 million doses – $30 million dollars – of the 21 million doses it made for the 2002-03 season. By throwing away one-third of that year’s supply and losing that much money, the company was forced to close the Marietta, Pa., factory in which the flu vaccine had been manufactured – not to menton the fact the 800 people who worked there no longer had jobs.
The refusal of the Chiron Corp.’s contaminated doses coupled with the poor economics of manufacturing flu vaccines means little respite for those seeking flu vaccines this winter.
Many companies have cancelled employee flu clinics, due to the vaccine shortage, according to the CDC, which is working in conjunction with many businesses to provide a newsletter listing ways to help avoid the flu in an effort to keep employees at work instead of sick at home.
Even our Canadian neighbors are offering us no respite in this epidemic. The provinces of Alberta and Ontario are now requiring all flu shot-seekers to show proof of residency as a deterrent to desperate U.S. boarder-hoppers.
The one upside to the lack of flu vaccines is that it gives those so inclined a free pass to miss work or skip class. Just tell your boss or teacher you are not a baby or an old person, so you couldn’t get a shot. Then spend all day watching movies, boozing, sledding, sleeping or doing whatever you want. If they give you any gruff, just tell them it’s not your fault, and if they have an issue to call the limey, tea-drinking fog-breathers from across the pond, because they are to blame for your “illness.”
Mike Melochick is a senior journalism major who has never called in sick to work or skipped class under any false pretenses – ever.
