The Swine Flu Affair Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease (1978) / Chapter Skim
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6 Field Trials
6 Field Trials
Pages 32-40
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From page 32... ...
This would produce some 30 million bivalent doses, to be used for high risk groups, mainly the elderly. Third, the rest of the swine flu vaccine would be turned into monovalent doses and used on a one-person, one-dose basis, thus insuring wide availability.
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From page 33... ...
Actually, there seem to have been many persons present who, in some degree or other, feared the swine flu program either as a dubious diversion from less speculative ventures -- measles, polio -- or as a likely failure in the public mind, the opposite of Kilbourne's view, or worse as a presumptive danger to the public health because of unknown side effects, the Alexander worry. Jonathan Fielding, Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health, told us that he remembers disagreeing: I didn't favor a mass vaccination program because I thought the risk of an epidemic small and I didn't want to divert resources from other programs.
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From page 34... ...
The CBS transcript quotes him on the April 2 Evening News: There are as many dangers to going ahead with immunizing the population as there are withholding. We can soberly estimate that approximately fifteen percent of the en tire population will suffer disability reaction.7 Goldfield shared Alexander's view that mass immunization should not follow planning unless swine flu actually appeared again and showed itself to be more than a fluke.
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From page 35... ...
The national Health Ministry's equivalent of ACIP urged flu shots for half the population in a set of high-risk groups excluding healthy children and most adults between 40 and 65. The provinces acceded, scraping funds out of their regular health budgets.8 Meanwhile, American field trials were being planned.
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From page 36... ...
Mindful of the President's announcement, knowing that the funds had been appropriated, spurred by fellow professionals in PHS and sharing most of their concerns, the laboratories went full-tilt to meet governmental targets, rounding off Victoria while building up swine vaccine. They gambled on the field trials and counted on BoB licensing thereafter.
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From page 37... ...
The rest had to revise their estimates of need and of peak loads. On June 21 and 22, NIAID played host in Bethesda to a joint meeting of the BoB Review Panel on Viral and Rickettsial Vaccine and the ACIP.
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From page 38... ...
In previous pandemics children had been the chief spreaders of disease. And second, Sabin argued that with proper preparation we could keep ahead of spread, inoculating quickly if the virus reappeared.
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From page 39... ...
The second was that emergency clinics would work on a sixday week; working on Sundays was not discussed. The third was that "commitment" to a standby program would decline over time necessarily; the adrenal charge of a perceived emergency was nowhere recognized, nor was the draining effect of doubts about the program as it stood.
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From page 40... ...
Sabin was the Goldfield of this coverage, but he was joined by others, notably Alexander, moved by three more months without a trace of swine flu. Uncharacteristically, Alexander went public: I think the issue is, as time goes on, there -- it's becoming more evident that up till now there's no sign of swine influenza outbreaks like the one that occurred in Fort Dix, New Jersey occurring in the United States.
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