Flu Shots

wrote:

Vicky Bilaniuk wrote in message m...

wrote:


There's no shortage of the pediatric vaccine, as I understand it.
That vaccine is wholly manufactured by Aventis and the US has a full
supply.

I've read stories of children being turned away.


Possibly their individual pediatricians don't have a full supply. I'm
finding in online searches that the CDC has confirmed that the
pediatric vaccine (ages 6 months to 23 months) is manufactured wholly
by Aventis Pasteur, which confirms what I heard on NPR...


The kids I read about were older, which explains it.

Akuvikate wrote:
The pediatric vaccine is made without thimerisol

The single-dose pediatric vaccine is, but our pediatrician also has
multi-dose vials, which do contain thimerosal. I don't know about shortage
or not, but our doctor didn't have single-doses in yet (and wouldn't until
November), and has had difficulty getting as many as they wanted in the
past.

Phoebe
--
yahoo address is unread; substitute mailbolt

Thanks. I didn't know that. They just keep telling us that my other two
daughters cannot have the shot yet so I figured that there was a shortage
with the pediatrics also.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)

wrote in message
m...
"Sue" wrote in message
...
wrote in message
There's no shortage of the pediatric vaccine, as I understand it.
That vaccine is wholly manufactured by Aventis and the US has a full
supply.

Hmm, I don't believe that is true. My daughter is high risk and she got
one,
but her siblings and us the parents cannot get one yet.

The pediatric vaccine is the one for children ages 6 months to 23
months. Aren't your kids older than that? You and your husband
certainly are. :-)

NPR reported that Aventis was the sole manufacturer of the pediatric
vaccine, and I also had no trouble turning up that information on a
web search. Whether or not individual pediatricians have a supply is
a different question, of course.

--
C, mama to twenty-three month old nursling

"Carol Ann" wrote:
I may not let her come to work at all.......

It's not all that bad, really. She is healthy and, most important,
she is breastfed, so she will be sharing in whatever immunity you
already have. And you have frequent exposure to customers in your
mom's store, so you should already have good immunity. Remember,
vaccines are not the only source of immunity. Other sources include
getting sick with the virus and recovering (this gives you the best
possible immunity, much better than a vaccine), and being exposed to
the virus but not getting sick (this can be better or worse than a
vaccine).

So don't worry, okay? In your particular case, there really is not
anything to worry about.

Pologirl

Did you see this article? How sad. They are making the flu shot seem like
it's a life or death situation.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135599,00.html

Woman Dies During Wait for Flu Vaccine
Friday, October 15, 2004

LAFAYETTE, Calif. — A 79-year-old woman who stood in line more than
five hours for a flu shot (search) collapsed and died after striking her
head.

Marie Franklin and her husband, Robert, had been standing with
hundreds of other seniors outside a Safeway supermarket on Wednesday when
she became pale and weak. She collapsed as she walked toward shade.

Franklin, an award-winning local artist, died from those injuries
Thursday. The Contra Costa County coroner's office ruled the death an
accident.

"We see it as a fluke accident and choose not to blame anyone," said
the Franklins' daughter, Ginni Poulos of Portland, Ore., who flew to her
parents' home in the San Francisco Bay area city of Orinda. "We do think it
could have been better organized. People wouldn't have had to wait so long
if they had more workers or created a better system."

The nation's limited supply of flu vaccine has led to long lines at
offices and stores offering vaccinations. Most of those waiting in line are
the elderly and young children, those most susceptible to influenza.

The Franklins arrived at the Safeway at 8 a.m. and found hundreds of
people already in line. At 1:15 p.m., Franklin got out of line to wait in
the shade, leaving her husband to hold their spot.


E-MAIL STORY PRINTER FRIENDLY
FOXFAN CENTRAL
Woman Dies During Wait for Flu Vaccine
Friday, October 15, 2004

LAFAYETTE, Calif. — A 79-year-old woman who stood in line more than
five hours for a flu shot (search) collapsed and died after striking her
head.

Marie Franklin and her husband, Robert, had been standing with
hundreds of other seniors outside a Safeway supermarket on Wednesday when
she became pale and weak. She collapsed as she walked toward shade.

Franklin, an award-winning local artist, died from those injuries
Thursday. The Contra Costa County coroner's office ruled the death an
accident.

"We see it as a fluke accident and choose not to blame anyone," said
the Franklins' daughter, Ginni Poulos of Portland, Ore., who flew to her
parents' home in the San Francisco Bay area city of Orinda. "We do think it
could have been better organized. People wouldn't have had to wait so long
if they had more workers or created a better system."

The nation's limited supply of flu vaccine has led to long lines at
offices and stores offering vaccinations. Most of those waiting in line are
the elderly and young children, those most susceptible to influenza.

The Franklins arrived at the Safeway at 8 a.m. and found hundreds of
people already in line. At 1:15 p.m., Franklin got out of line to wait in
the shade, leaving her husband to hold their spot.


"She was standing the entire time, with nowhere to sit and no shade,"
Poulos said.

Teena Massingill, Safeway public affairs manager, said employees
brought out chairs, snacks and water for people waiting in line. Many had
lined up well before the shots began at 10 a.m. and employees handed out
numbers in the early afternoon, sending people home who were not going to be
able to get one of the 500 shots available.

"It wasn't a drastic number of people who were told they couldn't be
seen," Massingill said. "We're trying to provide these vaccines in the best
way that we possibly can."

Police in Concord, another East Bay city, reported that two other
seniors, women ages 76 and 83, were hospitalized Thursday after collapsing
outside a Costco store from possible heat exhaustion while waiting in a long
line for the vaccine.

The government has urged healthy adults to skip the shots after
British regulators shut down shipments of vaccine that accounted for nearly
half the nation's supply after some batches were contaminated with bacteria.


***************

There just HAS to be a better way.

~Carol Ann

I may not let her come to work at all.......

It's not all that bad, really. She is healthy and, most important,
she is breastfed, so she will be sharing in whatever immunity you
already have. And you have frequent exposure to customers in your
mom's store, so you should already have good immunity. Remember,
vaccines are not the only source of immunity. Other sources include
getting sick with the virus and recovering (this gives you the best
possible immunity, much better than a vaccine), and being exposed to
the virus but not getting sick (this can be better or worse than a
vaccine).

So don't worry, okay? In your particular case, there really is not
anything to worry about.

Pologirl

Thanks, Pologirl!

I'll get her the shot and take her to work....and will try to just keep her
hands as clean as possible.

~Carol Ann

Carol Ann wrote:


By the way, he did say that the CDC released the 214 number, but didn't say
whether it was in Georgia, Columbus, or nationwide.

The number of reported children's deaths due to influenza was
about the number in the US (forget the exact statistic, so he might
be right on). However, the CDC *asked* people to report influenza
related deaths in children, but it's not clear to what level of
cooperation they got.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Hillary Israeli wrote:
In . net,
Clisby wrote:

* Julian (who is 7) will be getting his on Friday, but he's got reactive
* airways and wheezed pretty badly with the flu last season (which he
* unfortunately caught despite being vaccinated). I'll get mine on November
* 1st (I'm asthmatic). The rest of the kids and my husband will have to do
* without, given this year's shortage, as none of them are high risk.
* --
*
*Couldn't your husband get the FluMist? I don't think there's any
*shortage of that, although high-risk people aren't supposed to take it.

I've been hunting for one for my husband. No doctors are admitting to
having any!


I didn't even realize you got it from doctors; I thought you just got a
prescription and bought it at a pharmacy.

Clisby

In t,
Clisby wrote:
*
*I didn't even realize you got it from doctors; I thought you just got a
*prescription and bought it at a pharmacy.

well, I have always gotten flu shots from my general practicioner or my OB
(depending if I'm pregnant or not!); my kids have gotten them for the past
two years from their pediatrician. My husband, who does not have a primary
care physician he likes, has used the pharmacy clinics before, and many
people do, but my personal experience has been that you just get it from
your own doctor. Hey, that way, my insurance covers it, instead of paying
out-of-pocket, too!

I'm frustrated now because apparently (I just found this out yesterday) my
90 year old grandma has not had a flu shot yet, and we can't track one
down for her at all. I spent a while on the phone with the dept of public
health the other day and apparently the only way to get her one of their
vaccines (which of course she qualifies for) is to show up 4 or 5 hours
prior to the start of a vaccine clinic and wait in line. Well, first of
all, the vaccine clinics are all at least half an hour's drive from her
home, and since they start at 9 am, I'd be taking her to sit in line at 4
or 5 AM. She is not about to do that, flu or no flu, and I can't say I
blame her. She's 90 years old, and of the mindset that a 90 year old "old
lady" as she calls herself deserves a bit of respect and so forth, and she
has basically told me that having lived so long, she's entitled to be
catered to to some extent. So while it's not that she wants the flu shot
to come to her necessarily (although it would be nice), she would
definitely expect to be able to show up at a particular time and wait less
than oh, half an hour - and to wait in some kind of comfortable chair at
that. And the public health people said if she would need to sit, we'd
have to bring our own chair, even. Can you believe it? So. I have called
every physician she's seen in the past five years, none of whom have the
vaccine, I have called all the local hospitals, who have all uniformly
referred me to the health department - and the health department,
well...sigh.

What frustrates me is that if she were living in an assisted living
facility or nursing home, she'd have gotten the shot. But because she
insists on independence (well, she's dependent on family but she does not
live in a place which provides assistance), she slipped through the cracks
and now we are going through this.

I guess she's going to have a lonely long winter, staying away from people
and trying to avoid the flu. Sigh.

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx