About Vaccine

I'm really angry about the flu shot situation. I'm in a high-risk group, with heart problems and a medical history that means I'm quick to get pneumonia when I get a respiratory bug. I shouldn't have to worry for a minute about whether there will be a dose left for me.

But with all the other problems to complain about, is it really fair to blame the administration for not dealing with a problem that's been lurking for years? In a word, yes. Why? Because of all the effort they put into vaccine issues.

Remember, Cheney was flogging the idea of widely administering smallpox vaccine back in late 2002. He was still cranky about the bad response the medical community had to that idea as recently as January 2004.:

Q: Are there any lessons for you in the way the smallpox vaccine program sort of ran into public opposition? Is that an example of where the public is less aware of the dangers than they ought to be?

CHENEY: Well, we -- I'm trying to be careful here so I don't start another wave of concern out there about smallpox. People clearly were concerned about the side effects of the vaccine. I think there was a certain amount of complacency in terms of people not being willing to take it as seriously as we thought it should be taken. And so far we've been fortunate. Hopefully we will continue to be fortunate. It's to some extent the responsibility, though, of those of us in government to think about the what-ifs, to worry about the worst case, to look at the evidence that's out there and connect the dots.

And we were criticized, the government was criticized generally prior to 9/11 for, "you didn't connect the dots." I think we did, but that charge is made. Here you're in a situation where you clearly want to make certain that you take all the intelligence available, you look at the capabilities of your adversaries, you draw reasonable conclusions, and you act on those conclusions. And that's what we did with respect to smallpox.

In case you don't remember, the "side effects" of the smallpox vaccine include serious illness and death, a cost that Cheney was apparently willing to pay in view of the smallpox threat (which was non-existent, being as how the only known remaining samples of smallpox in the world are in US and Russian labs.)

So, it wasn't like no one in the administration had time to look at our vaccination situation, and advocate widespread mandated efforts to both develop supplies and ensure that it be administered. And it's not like, when they were talking about smallpox, (which has killed no one in the US during my lifetime) no one mentioned the flu, (which kills thousands in the US each year):

"The thing that stops you from doing this is the complexity of the smallpox vaccine, which is not a safe vaccine," says William Schaffner, head of the preventive medicine department at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, one of the hospitals that is opting out. "There's a real disease that kills people unnecessarily: the flu. Mr. President, I would love to see you endorse a national flu vaccine campaign with the same vigor."

So, they didn't even need to work hard to "connect the dots" on flu vaccine.

As Cheney said, "It's to some extent the responsibility, though, of those of us in government to think about the what-ifs, to worry about the worst case, to look at the evidence that's out there and connect the dots." That's what they failed to do here, and they deserve criticism.

And if that weren't bad enough, it really galls me to have these men who were ranting about smallpox dismiss my legitimate fear for my own health as a result of Kerry "scare tactics."