We are wise to test and refine a drive-through flu vaccination clinic. Now is the time to figure out how to do it right. This year?s influenza forecast is about average, and plenty of vaccine is on hand.
That may not be the case next year or the year after that or whenever ? not ?if ever,? according to experts ? an especially deadly pandemic influenza strikes.
Medical experts around the world say we?re overdue for a big one, and if it?s some variant of the bird flu popping up here and there in Asia, it could be THE big one.
Howard County and other communities have been holding drive-through vaccination clinics for a couple of years to determine whether that is a viable way to immunize a lot of people in a short time. The answer is: Maybe.
Last year, in their first try, health officials vaccinated 2,081 drive-through residents for a reasonable price of $20.
Sunday, they tried again. Free shots. Massive publicity. Goal doubling response to 4,000.
About 28 percent more, 2,668, showed up. While that represents a significant increase, it means public health officials need to do more to inform citizens. We citizens need to wake up, pay more attention and take action to protect ourselves and our families.
County Executive Ken Ulman was first in line Sunday. More officials should take that lead. Vaccinating at the rate of 667 an hour is fine unless we need to average 1,000 an hour as called for in the plan.
Police, fire, emergency medical and public health officials say they learned a lot Sunday that will make future drive-through clinics more efficient.
But the goal of getting people to drive through in the first place must remain No. 1.
It has been 39 years since the last pandemic when flu killed an estimated 34,000 Americans. The 1957-58 pandemic, killed 70,000 in the U.S.
But public health officials fear we are overdue for another 1918-19 influenza scythe of death. That one killed more than 675,000 Americans, 40 million to 50 million worldwide.
To get some idea of the toll, that means almost 2 million Americans would die of the disease today. Worse, essential systems from hospitals to electric power grids are more vulnerable to decimation of key personnel now than they were in 1918.
Last year, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt recounted 1918 when introducing a Pandemic Planning Summit: “Everyone was out sick. There were too few milkmen, too few firefighters, too few telephone operators and too few gravediggers. The city didn?t have enough workers to process death certificates. … Bodies and caskets stacked up. … Hospitals were overwhelmed. Flu patients filled six wards at Johns Hopkins. Finally, the hospital had to close. … By the most conservative of counts, at least 75,000 of Baltimore?s 600,000 residents were struck by the flu. More than 2,000 died.”
That is the vision keeping health officials awake at night. That is why they are now ? before panic sets in ? trying to figure out how best to take action.
The efforts of Howard County and municipalities around the nation are laudable, but they are not enough.
