The Flu Insanity

So I stopped by in Lake Forest Park for some bread on the way home (Great Harvest Bread... I stop by every Thursday for a loaf of their sourdough) and was a little surprised at the magnitude of traffic. I managed to find a parking place, and went in, and noticed that the mall itself was jammed with people, mostly elderly. I asked what was going on and was told that the city had their allotment of the flu vaccine.

There were only 300 shots available, and apparently the line had grown to over 350 people before 10 am. People had been lining up for flu shots since 6 am. The police were going through and explaining to people who had arrived "late" that they had to go somewhere else to try to get their shots.

I've gotten the flu shot twice. The first time I got it, a week later I got incredibly sick with flu-like symptoms, then later on that flu season I actually caught the flu. I got the shot a second time after being assured that there was absolutely no way I could have gotten the flu the first time from the flu shot, and that the shot was perfectly safe. A week later I got flu-like symptoms - once again I was very sick, but I never caught the actual flu itself that year. My new doctor suspects that I was allergic to one of the ingredients in the flu shot those years, and told me that as long as I'm young and strong I should just not get a flu shot.

Some people have no choice. They work in the health care profession, or they are older folks who live and work around young children. The heartbreak of some of the people upon learning that they couldn't get the shot today was hard to see.

As an aside: Am I the only one who finds it mildly ironic that we're being told that importing cheaper drugs from Canada (drugs that are made and packaged in the USA) isn't safe, but all our flu vaccine comes from England or France? It was one of those "huh?" moments when I learned that little fact about the flu vaccine.