Those air guns worked really well, were fast, didn’t require much training, had low labor requirments, and were almost painless, but there was a problem that they had a measurable effect of causing infection by pushing stuff through the skin. I wasn’t aware that the military still used them.
For the flu shot, I make an appointment online at whatever Montreal clinic has the soonest appointment time, and I go there. I have asthma so maybe that’s why I’ve never had to pay for the flu shot?
That’s how I used to do it. Anyway, don’t know how I’ll get a flu shot next season. I’m stuck indefinitely in Rosemont these days. It’s nice enough.
Back in the late 70s dogs began getting sick and often dying from what was discovered to be Canine Parvovirus and initially there was no vaccine. At some point, someone proposed that there were enough similarities between Canine Parvovirus and Mink Enteritis Virus to justify looking at the possibility of using Mink Enteritis Vaccine to protect dogs.
A veterinarian in Pittsburgh flew his private plane to the state where Mink Enteritis Vaccine was being produced, and purchased all they would sell, bringing it back to Pittsburgh. He began offering vaccination to the public in the form of vaccine clinics.
It was nuts. At risk dogs being brought together in large groups. Some of the dogs brought to the clinic were actually sick, eliminating virus laden diarrhea everywhere. The vaccine ended up causing more problems (vaccine site granulomas, abscesses, anaphylaxis, etc) than protection, and the vaccine clinics caused a huge increase in cases.
Today dog owners take parvovirus vaccination for granted.
I think that you’re started off with a mistaken assumption. There will probably be a staged rollout as doses are available.
However long it takes to make billions of doses, they’re not going to wait until those are ready to start giving them. The first million doses (probably pre broad-approval) will be given to people at high risk or with politically important connections. Medical personnel, first responders, and politicians.
The next 10 million (after FDA approval) will likely be used in places where there are current hotspots.
After that point, maybe there’s a lottery.
I don’t know that you need a special process to handle them. People will get them the same way they get normal vaccines. Some at doctors offices, some at pharmacies, some at their employers, some (apparently) at City Hall.
I preferred the original thread title (“How to implenet vaccinations”). Suggests that we can get our shots on-line. Everyone will be much safer that way.
I assume OP meant it that way. 
I knew they still used them as of a few years ago. Guess I should have done a bit of research before stating that earlier; this website says they stopped using them in 1997, and they are not recommended for Third World vax programs due to the risk of spreading hepatitis C and HIV. ETA: A few more years ago than I thought.
This link said that some diabetics have used them to inject insulin! That’s surprising to me because I just don’t see how they could get an accurate enough dosage.
Or, in some models, the first million doses go to people who pay for them.
Since some American companies are putting up big money for vaccine development, this is a live issue.
Modified live or killed, more likely.
I remember the entire school being lined up in the gym and being given the cube of sugar with the polio glop, then the multineedle small pox thing, then the other one that was a combination of shots. We couldn’t go to school without them. There was also the tuburculosis thing.
Issue was I had had chicken pox, measels, german measels, scarlet fever and whooping cough before the innoculations. Yay plague parties. I got mumps as an adult of 24 babysitting a friends kid. Honest to god, I knew my brother had mumps on a driving road trip vacation to a friend of my dad’s wedding … I sort of assumed I must have gotten it too, because I was ill so much of my childhood [chronic lung issues, still sort of have them though now they are phosgene related]
I can call my oncologist and he will arrange for any vaccination I want or he feels I need - I was getting my flu shots there and got the shingles one, and one of the pneumonia ones as well a few mo nths ago.
To return to my question of enough Americans being willing to line up to get a new vaccine … for many vaccines we reach levels that herd immunity becomes effective by requiring it for kids. Those that are not required for school (plus preschool and licensed daycare) entry lag significantly (influenza, HPV …)
What are the ethics of that in this case?
Heck even testing in in kids has some question when the risk of the disease itself is so small to the specific population and the risk of the vaccine in the population is of course unknown. There is and should be an extremely small tolerance for adverse reactions in that case. While of course there will be a significant group of parents rushing to get their children vaccinated as soon as it is available, in a context of lower case count even one post-marketing Kawasaki Disease like reaction could fuel anti-vaxxers mightily. And pushback becomes generalized beyond a specific product.
… and then started again in 1998, and then it’s not clear after that. Also, 600 injections per hour! (1 every 6 seconds). No wonder they were popular for mass inoculation.
Do you mean like auctioned off to the highest bidder? That seems unlikely to me in general, although I’m sure there will be some amount of the wealthy and powerful getting first in line.
Maybe the only positive thing about being diabetic is I get priority for the vaccine. A while back flu shots were in short supply but I was able to get one. Other people will have priority too like doctors, nurses, EMTs, cops, firemen, people over 60.
Hari Seldon:
Nearwildheaven:
I’m in that category, as well. IF they come up with a vaccine and rush it to market as quickly as is being hoped (by the end of the year, within 12-18 months, what have you), I would be terrified that it hadn’t been properly tested and vetted with serious trials to make sure it is safe, effective, and absent any horrific side effects.
There are drugs every year that have gone through rigorous testing and are still found to have dangerous side effects. Two off the top of my head: I used to take an arthritis medication called Vioxx that was pulled off the market because it caused increased incidence of heart attacks. Accutane, an acne medication, was recalled for causing birth defects, suicidal thoughts, and inflammatory bowel disease.
So I’d rather not be a guinea pig for anything that they might slap-dash together in a few months and rush through abbreviated trials. I understand the need for speed, but you can have fast or good; rarely both.
I remember this in first or second grade. Would have been around 1968
It shouldn’t be that big an issue until there is plenty to go around. I don’t doubt that the media will make it a big issue though.
I suspect it will be a bigger issue than you suspect.
Because human nature.
A few things to remember about vaccines -
One. None are 100% effective, most significantly less protection than having the disease, some are much less. They work because of herd immunity. In a pertussis (whooping cough) outbreak that is set off by vaccine refusers and delayers the majority of those who get sick are always those who have been vaccinated. Larger n. Math. If a safe and effective vaccine is developed being vaccinated is no magic shield until most everyone else is vaccinated (or resolved from infection) too, creating a herd around you.
Two. Vaccines take at least several weeks to build to protective levels.
Three. Every vaccine that is newly used widely quickly will have strange things that happen in the two weeks after the vaccine is given. Most often these things are just rare strange things that happen in any case and just happened to occur with the vaccine, some very few times they are in fact rare events that occur rarely enough that pre-approval testing did not see them. It takes time to prove which is the case, and longer to convince the public that something they heard from “someone whose cousin was perfectly okay until a week after the shot …” is bullshit. Assuming it is. And convincing people of that requires that expert bodies have credibility with the public. That has been undercut both by poor messaging from those bodies and by many others colored by partisanship (and not just the Red side). This vaccine (or these vaccines) is/are being rushed through. The odds of real problems coming up in post-marketing surveillance seem large to me. The odds of something that scares people coming up, which turns out to be not real, a certainty.
Now couple that with the very real aspect of human nature that we respond to immediate and novel threats much more than to ones that may occur weeks down the road or are threats we’ve become accustomed to.
A new vaccine does relatively little good to the broad public until there is plenty to around, given before most are being exposed, and most are agreeing to take it.
I think people declining the vaccine is likely going to be a very big deal. Even as the media also reports a crisis of not enough to around.