The government doesn’t care? About whom? What does this mean? Does the aging baby boom generation care more about itself or about its children and grandchildren? I don’t get it. What has happened to us? I remember resenting it 40 years ago when we were described as the most self-indulgent generation in history, but now I have to wonder if that designation was not correct.

One pertinent point: there is indeed insufficient information about the MF59 adjuvant’s safety. That is why rigorous surveillance is needed. The New England Journal studies suggest that the adjuvant reduces the amount of antigen needed for an immune response, meaning that more Americans can be protected with its use, and that “rationing” will be less necessary. Decision making under conditions of uncertainty is what doctors (and other humans) are faced with every day. Rare adverse effects could accrue quickly if surveillance is less than vigilant. We need to monitor carefully to make sure the CDC does its job.

The US has made the decision to outsource vaccine production, a policy that has certain consequences. We have less flexibility and autonomy than would be ideal when it comes to flu vaccine production and distribution. Little blue pills for erectile dysfunction are bigger money-makers than flu vaccines. “BIG PHARMA” has elected to invest its resources for products that bring in a greater financial return. Drugs that you need once a year don’t qualify; those that you need regularly are a different matter.

A flu epidemic is “hype,” but this is reality? The CDC is emphasizing that there will not be enough H1N1 vaccine for everyone, but now we are all going to be forced to receive it?

I am old enough to remember certain hippies in 1969 fearing that Ronald Reagan would put them all into concentration camps if he ever came to power. I have been reminded again and again of those times when I see people with posters equating Obama with Hitler and Stalin. Except they do not disappear into the concentration camps or the gulag! Nor did the fear-stricken hippies of yore.

The annual flu vaccine is fast-tracked, and has never taken 11 years to prepare, by the very nature of the beast. The H1N1 vaccine is not the exception but the rule in this area.

Physicians are being given information about the highest risk groups who have priority for the new vaccine so that they can give current information to their patients; no one is expected to recommend the vaccine for “all of them.”

In the end, reason will prevail, but only if very determined individuals make it their business to see that it does.

And it’s not a schizophrenic stretch of the mind to imagine that some type of biomedical implant with GPS potential could be slipped in either in this vaccine or during some other world class emergency that under the auspices of emercency martial law could be forcibly injected into every person in this country merely at the whims of some Health Czar yet to be installed in our ever mushrooming bureaucracy. If we ever lose the right of private possession of firearms, the whole show is over.