Swine Flu Vaccine: Competing Narratives
Michael Specter has a piece in the New Yorker about how dangerous, anti-vaccine rumors may be threatening the campaign to vaccinate Americans against H1N1. It’s interesting, especially the bit about Bill Maher’s bizarre Tweet, but the piece feels premature to me…
At the moment, the bigger problem with the vaccine is that nobody knows when or where they can get it. The first doses just came out this week, and the feds are leaving it up to the states and locals to distribute them. Just like in most emergencies, your experience will depend almost entirely on how competent (and well-funded) your local officials are. Or, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently explained:
“We’ll never, from the mother ship, give one national picture. It’s going to be many, many local decisions.”
Welcome to the theme for this fall. Local, local, local. While it may make sense for the federal government to provide clear and specific direction, it ain’t gonna happen. Federalism makes hard things harder…
For now, confusion--and demand--seem to be swamping conspiracy and condemnation. As the New York Times reports today, pediatricians’ offices are currently being overwhelmed with calls from concerned parents who just want to know when, where and whether to vaccinate their kids. The problem is, nobody at the doctors’ offices knows the answers yet… And anyone who has been to a pediatrician’s office knows that it is the last place to expect agile customer service. So what we have now is a lot of irritated receptionists and frustrated parents.
There is a powerful anti-vaccine movement that may jeopardize this unprecedented public-health quest, but I don’t see it happening just yet. However, there’s still lots of time!
For now, parents who are baffled can find out (some) info from the CDC’s new brochure (warning: pdf) for parents--preciously subtitled in crayon font.
While I’m at it, here’s an updated advisory for pregnant women, also from the CDC.
notepad publishing said on October 10, 2009 at 1:05 pm
H1N1 = Conspiracy?
H1N1 notepad
http://www.conspirare.net
October 2009
On October 1 2009, a former federal health minister dismisses as “crackpots and conspiracy theorists” those who would actively discourage Australians from having their swine flu vaccine’. October 2nd, the San Fransisco Chronicle publishes that ‘Everybody seems to be saying TRUST THE GOVERNMENT but it’s hard to trust the H1N1 vaccination campaign’ and on October 4rd, the Washington Post wonders ‘When the swine flu vaccine finally arrives this week, will Americans line up to get it?’ and CBS News writes about health care workers protesting the flu vaccine mandate. October 6th Foodconsumer publishes ‘Do NOT Let Your Child Get Flu Vaccine—9 Reasons Why’ and writes that ‘modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among Amish children who go unvaccinated’. October 7th Healthnews writes that 72 percent are concerned about potential vaccine side effects and the Examiner writes that’ theorists believe that government may force people to take the vaccine’. October 8th Times&Transscript;publishes that ‘a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal would be included as one of the substances in the H1N1 vaccine’, Medill Reports writes that Dr. Mayer Eisenstein is advising his patients to say no and is convinced that vaccines cause autism and the Los Angeles Times Blog publishes that media commentators Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have apparently fallen prey to the loony websites of the anti-vaccine folks and that Beck would do “the exact opposite” of what the government recommended and attend a swine flu party. October 9th, The Christian Science Monitor publishes that ‘the vaccine is opposed, moreover, by naturopaths and even a well-known epidemiologist’ and that Glenn Beck from Fox News has devoted hours to ask ‘why the World Health Organization, “Big Pharma,” and the government are hyping a pandemic’?
Read the full article with all media references @ http://www.conspirare.net
notepad publishing (a non-profit news agency based in Switzerland)