The editorial board at the San Jose Mercury-News did the math on vaccinating every American versus the likely impact of a tsunami of new flu cases and came down hard on the side of ramping up vaccine production.
The cost of vaccinating every American: $8 billion. The potential cost of a pandemic this fall: $450 billion--plus tens of thousands of deaths. The side effects from a new vaccine are likely to be only minimal, the newspaper asserts, making this decision a virtual no-brainer.
And that's not all. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should release a new flu vaccine ahead of clinical trials if swine flu starts to spread like a prairie fire. Concludes the Mercury-News: "Moving forward as quickly as possible with the best vaccine technology available is a wise investment against the threat of a pandemic."
- read the editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News