More letters on H1N1 vaccinations
edmontonjournal.com
Published: Thursday, November 05, 2009
Re: "Flames ignite vaccine furor; Province investigates how team, families jumped queue for flu shots," The Journal, Nov. 4.
Sports personalities and their families getting preferential health treatment over the general public is wrong, pure and simple. In fact, except for those deemed at high risk of infection and essential service people like health-care workers, police officers, etc., no one should be allowed preferential access to the H1N1 vaccine.
That being said, the fault doesn't lie with the Calgary Flames, but rather with Alberta's dysfunctional health-care system. This is where our anger should be directed. Who of us can honestly say we would decline an offer to get the vaccination for ourselves and family without having to endure lengthy lineups?
What Alberta Health Services did for the Flames is simply more evidence of a broken health-care system, and we all know who broke the system.
Del Smith, Edmonton
The mixed messages given to the public about the H1N1 vaccination is the same kind of information this government has been giving us for years.
Do you think the quality of information about the flu is any different than what we have been told about royalties or the Heritage fund? Where did the people's money go?
Harvey R. Thomas, Alliance
Media coverage of H1N1 has been effective. We are, apparently having forgotten that scientists and health officials aren't magicians, having flu-rage about vaccine planning, and we feel, almost universally, The Fear.
We could use a few more level voices like that of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who has said very clearly that the vast majority of children who develop flu-like symptoms this fall will have a few miserable days, and nothing more, and that those days are best spent at home - not in the ER or a doctor's office.
Some sorely-need context, such as that offered by the CBC's Dr. Brian Goldman on his blog last week, would also help. Commenting on the tragic death of 13-year-old Evan Frustaglio, he informed readers that against the backdrop of having mild asthma, Evan played a hockey tournament through mild flu symptoms, using over-the-counter medications when things took a turn for the worse, and that it was likely shock from dehydration that took his life.
Dr. Goldman also writes that "swine flu was and remains a high volume, low-acuity outbreak."
So how is it even remotely ethical to use a family's grief to justify the fearmongering that is keeping young mothers with asthmatic children awake nights, watching their children for signs of breathing difficulty?
Fear, we know, is counter-productive in countless ways, including in the ways it affects us chemically and immunologically.
H1N1, as a slightly different strain, may be highly infectious, but it isn't, according to the virologists who have tested it in the labs (nor according to the experience in Australia), more pathogenic than more familiar flu strains. Aside from the fact that treatments for complications of flu have improved since 1918, the virus itself in no way matches the pathogenic power of the 1918 virus.
Flu shots for those who feel they need it, by all means. But full information also, please. H1N1 research done by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found that 65 per cent of children between the ages of three and nine receive no protection from the vaccine. That we've come to believe we could be facing a 1918-scope tragedy, or that somehow life can be risk-free, or that the solution to all that ails us lies in ever-more-efficient vaccine or drug delivery, is the result of misinformation coming from those with vested interests, and of sensational media coverage.
Connie Howard, Edmonton
I am a senior medicine resident at the University of Alberta. Along with other health-care workers, I was denied access to the H1N1 vaccine for several days. In my opinion, the delay is not the primary issue. Rather, it is the shocking lack of planning and organization and the disregard for patient safety.
To not have a clear plan for the immunizations of front-line workers in the midst of a pandemic clearly tells those workers that their safety is of little importance and that their potential illness or death would be of little consequence.
This pandemic was not a surprise. During the delay, there sat hundreds of thousands of unused vaccines, while bureaucrats worked to develop and implement a plan that should have already been in place. By opening clinics with no criteria to identify those at highest risk, the role of "gatekeeper" was initially left to the general public - prone to panic.
This resulted in an initial 400,000 people being vaccinated, including the Calgary Flames and their families. However, many of those people were neither at high risk of infection, nor at high risk to develop severe or deadly disease.
This lack of preparedness shows a disregard for patient safety. The more staff who are ill, the fewer there are to work. Most importantly, by vaccinating those who do not need it before those who do, a situation is created that may result in fewer total infections, but an increased proportion of severe infections and death.
I can only hope that this process has served as a "test case" or "dry run" so that we are more successful in the future when faced with what could be a much more deadly virus.
Dr. Heather L. Smith, MD, resident, University of Alberta
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