(no subject)

[hel_ana]

CNN.com is running yet another story about the flu vaccine shortage. Because there's no actual new news about it, they're running a "Flu Reality Check" angle on it, pointing out that most healthy adults are in no danger of dying, and so don't really need the shot.

It asks the question "Why are people all freaked out, running here and there, going to Canada, etc?"

The answer, according to researchers? People have a "more generalized sense of feeling unprotected" and are reacting to a "lack of control over their own health choices". Healthy adults should just accept that they might get the flu, wash their hands frequently, and if they do get sick, "stay home and drink hot soup".

Strangely enough, nowhere in the analysis of the reasons for the panic are the following two factors:

1) The media has been screaming about the lack of flu vaccine for 2 weeks now. Playing Chicken Little and then turning around to say "what? what's wrong? really, it's not so bad, you're overreacting" is a little disingenuous, guys.

2) The very real fear among a lot of people in this country of taking time off from work, because they're afraid of outright firing or other retaliation, or of not being able to pay rent/put food on the table if they miss a few days of work. This country's employment environment is such that people can't afford to get sick, even with something that doesn't require medical care or hospitalization and irrespective of health insurance coverage. And that's a bigger problem than one year's supply of vaccine going up in smoke.

Comments

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

Disingenous - they're a 24 hour news channel - it's not implausible for them to start making their own news, just to be able to have something to report, hon.

I stopped taking CNN seriously a while back...

[hel_ana]

It's an AP story. It's not just CNN.

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

*pounding head*

Ah well - I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

[hel_ana]

And I should have mentioned that.

Now, I will give you that CNN is way more likely to pick up this particular wire story than, say, a small-market daily.

[nancyblue.livejournal.com]

This whole story is driving me nuts!! Last year, of course they wanted everyone to rush out and get one because we were expecting a huge epidemic. I didn't know one person who had the flu last year. Of course, conveniently, there will be no epidemic so it's ok if we skip out. I owuldn't get one anyway.

Yes, let's talk about the flu so we don't have to think too much about the 340 tonnes of explosives that have "gone missing" from a station in Iraq that was supposed to under our watch. Or how about all the insurgent infiltrators in the security forces there blowing each other up.

Move along. Nothing here to see.

[hel_ana]

I've gotten a flu shot every year since 98. I started because I was going back to school in a college with severe overcrowding and an early childhood education program. I figured that if the flu hit the daycare, it would rip through the school because of the sheer number of people there.

I didn't get one last year because I had the surgery coming up and figured it would be a bad idea.

Of course, last year Ontario was urging people to get the flu shot because of the SARS epidemic -- if you had had the flu shot and were exhibiting flu like symptoms, they could more quickly shunt you into observation for SARS.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

There's just as much fear with a mom that she won't be able to keep her job (the house and kids) going also.

I really hope we can get the vaccine to those who need it like my 95 year old grandmother and hopefully me (because of my asthma, not my thyroid cancer.)