I stand corrected. Earlier this month it was reported that they had not been vacinated yet because of priority vacinations of those at risk.
prioritizing seems to vary somewhat with the health districts, and also changes as they get more data on the flu, but increasingly health officials are assuming that children, including some pre-teens, are a high-risk group because they may never have been exposed to the flu before and thus not have any antibodies. that means that the li’l Obamas might have been considered to be in a high-risk group, even if their parents weren’t.
I just found in one of the medical journals I read at the hospital library, (sorry, I don’t remember which) that one of the reasons that *Novel H[sub]1[/sub]N[sub]1[/sub]
hits kids so hard is that, although not completely unique, it hasn’t showed up for a long time. People over 60 seem to have some immunity, where as those between ages 5 and 25 have none. The speculation is that this strain hasn’t made the rounds for about 55 years.
That does NOT mean if you’re over 55 you don’t need to get the immunization. You may not have any immunity.
A little ignorance bash: Most human flu strains have [sup]+[/sup]H1, 2 or 3 and [sup]++[/sup]N1 or 2 proteins on their surface, so there have been other H[sub]1[/sub]N[sub]1[/sub] flus.
*The “real” name of this strain of flu.
[sup]+[/sup]hemagglutinin
[sup]++[/sup]neuraminidase