Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
My concern isn't much about what happens a year from now looking at the effectiveness and results of this H1N1 year, once we sit down and look at all the data. My big concern is all this nonsense in the media and the ever growing distrust of vaccinations is spreading, which has real serious consequences for the future.
All you have to do is look at the MMR scare in the UK, all the preventable deaths/compications in children caused by a horribly flawed study done by a discredited and now shamed scientist.
I think that's the big underlying problem with this H1N1 season, because even though a lot here are not getting the shot, I doubt most of them do it because they mistrust vaccinations as a whole, at least especially when it comes to protecting children and the elderly.
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Agreed, that this might have serious implications for the future.
I honestly believe that the whole thing has been nothing more than a capacity building exercise and measurement. I still can't fathom how they managed to communicate the risk from it given they had a full set of data from the Southern Hemisphere for reference.
The whole problem is that although on the one hand it has been a useful exercise, on the other, with the fear communicated by the government and the projected end results to be much less than what they projected there is a very real possibility that in flu seasons to come should a virus present itself of a more credible and serious risk the message communicated might be greeted with a certain degree of skepticism. WHO needs to go back to its old definition of pandemic and call these things in the future for what they are ... epidemics.
At least, the lessons of this season will make it useful to build capacity for seasons to come.
Fotze congrats on the little'un and all the best for the older kid.