With limited quantities of H1N1 vaccines arriving in health clinics this week, one might expect a repeat of 2004 where people lined up for hours hoping to receive a flu shot. But, as reported by Michael Specter in the October 12 edition of The New Yorker, the demand for H1N1 shots may not materialize this year, largely because of the unfortunate mislabeling of the virus as "swine flu" when it first appeared this spring. The misleading name led many to associate H1N1 with the 1976 swine flu which was a well documented and well known public health debacle. Specter writes that the negative association with the 1976 flu plus a lull in publicity during the summer months...
"...provided an opening for the anti-vaccine, anti-government, and anti-science crowd, and they stormed through. Where, they wondered, was the big pandemic? Where were all the bodies? Last week, the political pundit Bill Maher dispatched a communiqué to his fifty-six thousand followers on Twitter: 'If u get a swine flu shot ur an idiot.' The view seems widespread. A national poll conducted by the University of Michigan found that only forty per cent of American parents plan to vaccinate their children against H1N1. The news is all the more distressing because the virus affects children and young adults far more powerfully than it does older people. (With most strains of seasonal flu, the elderly are especially at risk.)"
Specter also credits internet rumors, such as the unfounded belief that seasonal flu shots increase susceptibility to H1N1, for aiding in "the spurious alarms spread by those who would make us fear vaccines more than the illnesses they prevent."
Read the full article here.
