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H1N1 Widespread in 46 States as Vaccines Lag

By JACKIE CALMES and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The H1N1 virus has been sweeping along quite nicely. Obama recently declared it a national Emergency. He now is allowing hospitals to set up special sites to accept and treat patients with it, and he is allowing, with a waiver for the patient, to be sent to special treatment facilities or other hospitals if a surge of patients come. The swine flu is getting crazy, and people are looking for vaccines. Obama and hospitals exclaim that the epidemic has nothing to do with the shortage of vaccines though. Only 16 million doses of the vaccine were available now, and about 30 million were expected by the end of the month, and the expect to have around 200 million by the years end. Hospitals are told to accept all people despite medicare or medicade issues. People are so willing to get the vaccine that people are ending up lying about if they are pregnant or not in order to get a priority for the vaccine. They are trying to get more doses out to the public, but doctors and specialists have to grow the strain in eggs, so there is a limit on the speed of growth. Numbers of the flu death are high just like the swine flu, but the problem here is that it more affects young people whereas the regular flu affects more old people.
I will try and get a vaccine.