Hilary's Desk

In response to some questions after yesterday's blog, Fluvax was mainly used in adults here during March, so it's not been so much of an issue in this country in terms of children. The two vaccines being offered to children are Influvac and Vaxigrip. The pdfs for all three was in an earlier post, but they are embedded here under the names in the first sentence. Read Full Blog

“Demand for jabs puts squeeze on supply” squealed page 2 of the New Zealand Herald. And those of us who have collected these headlines for decades realise that there will be suckers out there who think the news is for real. Even if they know that this is the typical selling technique for all advertising. “Stocks limited” “One per person”. A few discrete enquiries, revealed a few baffled medical practice receptionists, who said that it was pretty much business as usual. The New Zealand Herald – if they keep clippings files, which I doubt – seemingly doesn't remember that just these sorts of headlines have been trotted out with monotonous regularity: 2000: “Early demand exhausts flu vaccine” and “100,000 more flu jabs on the way”; 2004: "Vaccine readied to ward off killer flu strain” 2005 “Bird Flu shots coming in winter” (Yeah, right...) “Crisis talks on flu vaccine” and so the headlines roll on. Read Full Blog