Weekly flu update

Apparently the laughable Sir Liam Donaldson believes that there is a chance that flu numbers could "shoot up" in the winter. In further news he also believes that the Pope is Catholic, bears do defecate in the woods and that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Everytime this man opens his mouth it make you wonder why he is in his job. Three weeks ago he said we were "tantalisingly close to beating swine flu". At the start of the holidays he wondered why it was that flu numbers were falling, seemingly unaware of the schools breaking up).

As for my question of the week, why is it that the flu vaccine passed its final approval phase last week, but will not start being given to people for two more weeks. In effect there is a three week gap between approval and the start of the process. The vaccine is ready, hundreds of thousands of doses have already been manufactured, doctors don't need all there doses of vaccine in order to start, they just need to start doing injections for the vulnerable as soon as possible yet we have to wait for three weeks.

Just to put this in to context, if this were H5N1 flu (which has a kill rate of 60%), a delay of three weeks and another 10-12 days in order for the vaccine to take effect, would see (at current infection rates) 14,000 infections in week one, 22,000 in week two, 33,000 in week three and 50,000 in week four. A total of 121,000 extra infections and an nearly 75,000 people dying needlessly.

Okay, so this is not H5N1, but our flu pandemic plans are based on it being H5N1. So the government's own uselessness in getting the vaccine out would kill 75,000 people !