> Translation: you don't know, didn't check, and have no expertise to > judge even if you had which you didn't.
Wrong, we do know that it's made the same as the seasonal flu shot, and there is thus no scientific basis for the conclusion that it would have any likelihood to have a higher incidence of reactions. As far as my expertise, you have no clue what level of experience I am speaking from but I almost certainly have more than you as this was my field of study and one that I continued to work in past grad school. The problem is you don't seem to understand that medicine is NOT a precise science. Can you ever guarantee something is 100% safe? The US has pretty stringent requirements for bringing anything new to market, but we certainly still have plenty of issues with unexpected drug reactions because it is simply not possible to ever test something widely enough to always catch the rare side effects. > Sounds like you're pretty faith-based there. Work for Novartis then? Drawing scientific conclusions based on available facts is hardly faith-based. > "We expect the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine to have a similar safety > profile as seasonal flu vaccines, which have a very good safety track > record." Again, medicine is NOT an exact science. They cannot make any other claim here regardless of the level of testing, until the vaccine is in wide use. Can they expect it to be as safe? Certainly. Can they absolutely *know* that? No more than they would know it with each year's flu shot until it's been used on millions of people. Remember, side effects are *extremely* rare. Even in '76 if you attribute all the cases to the vaccine, which is certainly debatable, you still only have about 1 in 100,00 cases at most. You could easily spend many months testing and not have a single person have a severe reaction. It is pretty much impossible to predict how quickly or slowly such a virus will spread in the meantime. When the whole point of a vaccine is to prevent the spread of a pandemic infection, it hardly does any good to spend so much time testing that by the time you move to the full-scale manufacturing, the damage has already been done. Epidemiology is simply NOT an exact science and if that is what you are looking for, certainty, you will never find it when it comes to these types of situations. However, they have certainly learned from the '76 flu scare and have not moved to a vaccination program until it *was* clear that this was going to be a widely spread incidence (unlike for instance, the avian flu). > People died. People were > crippled. Government said is safe, then it wasn't. People are also already dying and being crippled by the H1N1 flu. So your point is very poorly made. > Again, the question you're avoiding is does the risk of this strain > of > swine flu require a new vaccination program? We already know from the number of people infected so far with H1N1 that the incidence of death and serious complications is considerably higher than the risk of the same from vaccination. That's precisely what epidemiology is intended to determine, the risk-reward ratio of such a program. Do you seriously think that after the '76 incidence that the government would jump the gun and risk the same kind of embarrassment? Considering people still trot that out all the time as some kind of "proof" that they don't know what they are doing, it would surely seriously effect future similar endeavors, ones that might pose even more of a treat than this one. So no, I don't think they move to a full-scale vaccination program without a LOT of forethought and consideration of the available information. We are still trying to figure everything out about H1N1, for instance why the rate of death is higher in Mexico. But if we waited until we knew *everything* to any level of scientific surety as you seem to want, thousands of people will have already died and there would be nothing left to do but let it run its course. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:307123 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
