Quote:
Originally Posted by NuclearFart
However miniscule you perceive the risk, if it includes death, a couple days of mild malaise is a small price to pay for some degree of protection.
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Not according to my estimation of the risks. I'm - at minimum - just as likely to die in a car accident this year. I *could* take the precaution of wearing protective padding and a crash helmet every time I get in the car, which would significantly reduce that risk, but I don't, and neither does anyone else.
There are sound medical reasons for getting the shot (if it was available, which it's not). Fear of a tiny, almost insignificant chance of death is not one of them, and the main problem I have is the inaccurate representation of this flu as some sort of incipient Black Death. The media, as usual, can take most of the blame for hyping this into a disaster - nobody gets panicked over missing a few days of work, but death has a way of focusing the attention.
Further to risk/reward, how much do you think it's costing the Alberta health system to fast-track this vaccine program? Even at a very low guesstimate of $10 a dose and a million doses, that's $30 million for the vaccine alone. Now add in the labour involved in distributing and administering the dose, which can't be much less than the same. That's a very conservative $60 million, and I'd bet that it's more like double or triple that. Could that money have been spent more productively elsewhere in the health care system? Would a more rational programme of targetting only high-risk groups been a better use of the dollars?