Which means nothing. In the worst pandemic, many people do not get infected. In large populations, roughly 30%-40% of the population will get sick. That means odds are better than a coin toss that you won't in any given year.

Flu viruses mutate. The vaccine is worthless because this particular flu won't be coming back.

True...however, for anyone that was paying attention, it was obvious that it was being blown out of proportion. Remember when the media announced the first U.S. death in Texas? Later we learned that the boy who died wasn't an American, he was visiting from Mexico!

I think by then the vaccine had been ordered... In this case I think I would rather come down on the side of having way to much. I am willing to give the CDC benefit of knowing a hell of lot more than me.

4.2 - I understand what you are saying. But - who is employed in the CDC today? Do you really know? Do any of us have time to find out?

Probably would be a good idea to learn for the best interest of the people. It certainly would not hurt. U.S. citizens have the right to know - who is working in state and federal government.

So, unless you do know for certain who is employed at the CDC? He or she might not know more than you do. You simply do not have enough information to make that determination at this time. And it's ok to find out - better to lock in that we have great scientists and researchers than to speculate that we do.

In normal years, roughly 36,000 people are expected to die of influenza. Most of those are very young and over 50.

In this H1N1 epidemic, very few deaths occurred over 50 because people were immunized by previous vaccinations or by previous flu from decades ago.

That means that this H1N1 epidemic was much worse than it seems, because those 12,000 deaths were mostly young people in their prime. So in reality, for that age group, this H1N1 epidemic killed several times the usual number. That should have been brought out in the article.

Gee, can't wait for government health care to begin.

Nonsense. You don't have any clue what you are talking about.

1. When it started, nobody knew that people over 50 would be mostly immune. If they hadn't been, the death toll would have been more like 46,000. (36,000 in a normal year, plus 10,000 out of the 12,000 that did happen being young people who usually don't die.) But the old were immune because of the Ft. Dix vaccine and a long ago epidemic.

2. In this epidemic, most of the mortality has been young people. For people in the range from 15 to 35, the death rate from H1N1 has been 7-10 times what it is normally.

3. When enough people get vaccinated or recover from a virus that creates "herd immunity" because the immune people can't transmit it so the number of infections created by each sick person falls to less than one.

I would suggest you read a bit further on this, as your numbers are whacked.

Also, the "immunity" of people over 50 to which you refer is largely due to the fact that most people in that age group achieved natural immunity by being exposed to the virus (and multiple other flu viruses). Most folks over 50 were not vaccinated for this or other flu viruses in their younger years.

The numbers have been a scam, as has the lack of "scientific" methodology in data-keeping. Nothing but fear and hype, when compared to the norm for deaths from flu viruses, as the current data is seriously flawed/skewed.

Sorry, but no one with a basic understanding of how to properly collect scientific evidence would buy this...

Hey Kevin C-752389. Good Golly Miss Molly, you sure like to cry and blame. Be thankful that there was no epidemic and be thankful that we had an administration in Washington ready to rock and roll saving people with vaccines. Get over your paranoia little Rushie.

Guys like Kevin don't read full articles. They miss stuff like this:

"In Europe, where nations also found themselves with millions of unused doses, some commentators have attacked the World Health Organization, which declared swine flu a global epidemic, or pandemic."

But then again, he probably blames Obama for Europe overbuying too.

I was waiting to read the BLAME OBAMA post. Nevermind the media thats gets paid by industries to scare the money right out of our pockets. HMMM then again maybe it was Obama since he cant eat pork, cause he's muslim, and he just wanted to ruin the pork industry cause he's got bacon envy. Or could just be that he likes crutons and not bacon-bits on his salad.

So because someone else makes the same mistake, Obama gets a pass? He is spending us into oblivion, but you make excuses.

Perhaps it was because they weren't sure if they would have enough...but considering how the whole situation was blown out of proportion in the first place, I'd say it is more likely it was rationed to create the perception that supplies were limited-thus, create more fear and panic.

7.1 - SP - how do you know the situation was "blown out of proportion" any more than you know that it was actually rationed?

I find good opinions from many people here at Newsvine, I find few actual data to back up those opinions. The reason I make this suggestion is to not offend anyone - but to help Americans realize that in order for a fact to be - it must have something showing to prove it exists.

We can speculate as to why this or that seems or appears to be - but this is our national budget involved in these decisions.

If Americans truly care about the future of this nation - they had better pay attention to what is being tossed out as trash at their expense.

That is my sole agenda in informing the public through this media.

I looked into some of the rationing. Mostly it was bureaucratic idiocy. for instance a town of 50,000 was sent 20,000 doses. A woman on the city council decided that since there wasn't enough for everyone, nobody should get it. Seriously, that's what happened. Much of the vaccine was distributed through governmental channels rather than medical channels. That meant dimwits without a clue were often in charge.

The blame here is on greedy corporate leaders and their financial backers.

No, Pedro, it isn't. The blame is on over-regulation of vaccines trying to make them even more safe when they are already the safest medical product you can find. (Safer than aspirin, which causes roughly 10,000 deaths per year in the USA.) The blame is on an unrealistic public which doesn't understand how epidemics work.

Exactly my thought. Sell it for pennies on the dollar. It would be better than nothing.

Totally agree. Just another example of the ineptness odf this administration. The science czar who I am sure has a say in this is the brother to R Emanuel, Obamas chief of staff. He was the one that wrote the article about there are only certain segments of society who should have money spent on them as far as health goes. He did not include the aged or disabled. His article stated that these segments of society had really nothing to offer.

Guenavere: Yes, in fact, the Obama administration invented government waste, yes?

Actually, every US government administration has been full of waste since the 30s. But they don't teach history in schools anymore, so who could've known, yes?

So why wasn't the oil industry and BP prepared?

Because our government allowed it to not be prepared at the same time they are finger pointing. They waived requirement after requirement. Also the safety equipment required in other countries isn't required here and the well type was known to be riskier but the government allowed it.

And don't come back with some right wing / tea party comment either. It's a pathetic and impotent way to deflect blame that anyone who is informed can see right through. Both parties have a hand in it and the present administration took just as much campaign money from the oil industry as anyone else.

Off topic, but I don't care. All you wing nuts make me sick.

Swine flu is nothing new. I remember a little outbreak growing up in the seventies.

Me, i don't see conspiracies behind every door. I have little doubt that vaccinations, over time, have "net" improved the human condition. Don't think so small with flu only. Think Polio, Small Pox, Tetanus, TB, etc.

I don't disagree that vaccinations are helpful and have eradicated or diminished many deadly and debilitating illnesses. I'm not one of those crazy people that don't vaccinate my children and I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist. But if swine flu was around during the 70's, then why was it presented to the public as a "new" virus? It was very clearly fear mongering-for what reason, we can only speculate.

Because like every flu it mutated. And because so many people had not been exposed to a milder form of it. Many people in their 50s and 60s were not at risk this time because of earlier exposures to it and therefore had some natural resistence. It turns out that the people who had it the worst, (besides children) were people who had been born as preemies who were adults. I have a friend who's husband was a preemie, (he's in his 40s now) and even with the vacine he got H1N1 and ended up in the hospital for over a month, and still months later is havving difficulties with his lungs.

He might not have become so ill, if the hospitals had been more diligent about testing for it, they didn't until he'd been in the hospital for 2 weeks. A co-worker also said that his clinic flat out told him (when his daughter became ill with some flu like thing) that they [the clinics and hospitals] weren't testing for it unless all other treatments failed.

While I for once applaud the govt. for being proactive, I find that the whole thing should have been handled a lot better, and it might not have spread as far as it did. The friend whose husband had h1n1, well she and both her kids had something flu like as well, though they didn't get as sick.

Next time maybe we'll have a more rational two pronged plan that might really save more lives and long hospital stays.

Really? My son attends school-he didn't get the vaccination and he never got ill. The school never announced that the unvaccinated children had all gotten very sick despite the fact that swine flu was supposedly circulating in our area.

Maybe next time around people will wise up and realize that it was all just a bunch of fear mongering.

Really...I had four kids in school when swine flu "struck". Flu shots are for the elderly, the ill and the ignorant. I would also recommend it for a child that doesn't like to take medicine. My kids didn't spend any more time out of school this past year than they do in a typical year. The kids who were diagnosed with swine flu recovered and returned, and the lack of "big news" was a silence that was deafening. I'm glad that the governement was watching out for us, but I've thought for a long time that it was all about money, and I feel totally vindicated.

Kellian and Smarty-Pants: In any flu epidemic, roughly half to 70% of children get sick. This is because children are the primary vectors of influenza in the population. In the population as a whole, roughly 1/3 get sick. Then herd immunity sets in and the number of people infected by each sick person falls below one. If less than one person is infected by each person with the flu, then the epidemic dies out.

For each person who gets sick, the chance of death varies by age, but it is almost always below 1%, usually less than 0.5%. (Some groups like American Indians have seen rates as high as 40%, and average around 3%.) So, in a bad flu epidemic your child has less than 0.25% chance of dying.

So the fact that death did not land on your doorstep means nothing. A teacher who sees groups of kids and sees differences in the group - that observation has meaning. Yours do not have meaning.

So according to you-one anecdotal observation is more valid than another because it supports what you believe?

Concerned tourist never stated he/she was a teacher-for all you know, he/she is a secretary. Besides, since when do school staff keep track of who is or is not vaccinated against the flu? Perhaps the children that were not vaccinated at school received it from their pediatrician.

A child in my family that received the vaccination came down with a flu-like illness, several times. I am sure she wasn't the only person in the entire U.S that had the same experience. So to say that they became ill because they were unvaccinated is a farce-they could have been vaccinated without the her knowledge, and just because someone is vaccinated does not mean they will evade illness.

One of the reasons we didn't make enough flu vaccines in this country for ourselves is that there is already an artificially mandated price cap on flu vaccines. It was $10 a dose and it didn't cover the costs of development and manufacture.

We're not talking about a $10 a pill wonder drug here that companies make fortunes off of.

You are right, they don't know. This is a great frustration to me and to others who work on epidemiology of influenza. We would like testing to be automatic throughout the epidemic. It costs something, but if the volume of testing was higher it wouldn't cost as much.

The reason that testing is stopped is that it takes time, and in most cases it won't affect treatment. So physicians log it as "influenza like illness" once the virus has been found in an area. The logic is that we know influenza spreads like wildfire, so if it acts like influenza it probably is influenza of the strain that has been found.

There is a program where some physicians do send in samples. Those samples are analyzed and that is how after-the-fact we decide what strain(s) were active. It's always more than one strain.

And in some cases knowing will make a difference. A person can get more than one influenza strain at the same time. Usually, those people get more sick. And it really would be better to have closer to real time knowledge of the progress of an epidemic. Even then, our picture of the progress of the epidemic would lag by about 2 weeks.

We were not told it was "influenze-like" which, without testing, would be the correct. We weren't told that it was "probably" but that it was H1N1. So, do you really thing that doctor reported it as "flu like illness"?

I am not complaining about physicians not being able to give answers-I understand. I understand tests cost money. It would be ideal if they could test everyone-but no, it is not realistic.

Uncle Sam wants all of ewe to be terrorists so he can justify his bottom line.

The don't mandate seasonal flu shots, which more people die from, so what makes you think they would mandate a H1N1 vaccine?

I also disagree that when a real threat comes around that people will not get the vaccination because the government has "cried wolf" too many times. The people that fell for this fear mongering will most likely just do as the government tells them to, again. Those that were able to see through the b.s. likely have enough brains to recognize a real threat.