Opinion - northwest_view

POSTED: Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009

Scared of the flu shot? Let me take your place in line

I'm not going to question the decisions being made by some parents and health care workers to forgo swine flu vaccinations.

Apparently it has something to do with the hard-won American right to get sick and the nonfactual fact that the immunization is new, experimental and unsafe. If every hospital bed is filled with a nurse or orderly by the time all the school-age kids get the flu, well that's just hard cheese, I guess.

Again, I wouldn't want to question hysteria when I'm near hysterical myself. I'm not afraid of the shot, though. And I'm certainly not afraid of putting some mist up my nose. I'm afraid of the flu.

So all I'd like to ask these Opt-Out Americans is this: Can I have your place in line? Being a baby boomer, I grew up loving immunizations. I was happy - proud even - to be a little soldier in the war on communicable disease. I helped take on polio one sugar cube at a time.

Still, today I'm a regular at the flu-shot clinic, proudly displaying my Dora the Explorer Band-Aid to everyone in the newsroom who dares look at my pasty upper arm.

But with swine flu, I'm so far back in line that I've only heard rumors that there's a front of the line. The odds of me ever getting immunized are about the same as the asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth in 2036 (but slightly less than the Huskies scoring on fourth and goal from the one).

According to protocols set by the federal Centers for Disease Control, I am not young enough and not old enough. I do not have a job considered vital to the public health, welfare or safety (or vital at all). I don't have children younger than 6 months old. Try as I might, I am not pregnant. I do not have chronic health problems or immune-system issues.

My group is third from the bottom - all people age 50 and over (I know. I don't look it. Thanks for thinking that. Really. I'm blushing.) I'm just two steps above the lowest-priority group - "anyone who wants to protect themselves from the flu."

By the time my group becomes eligible for the vaccine, either the flu pandemic will have passed or everyone will be dead. Or both.

I was happy to get the shot in 1976 because President Ford told me to and I always did what Gerald Ford told me to do (up to and including his request to Whip Inflation Now). My college roommate drove us to the University of Washington Medical Center but opted/chickened out at the last minute.

Neither of us got swine flu. Neither of us got Guillain-Barre syndrome, an immune-system disorder that some thought was caused by the 1976 vaccination but that now some think might not have been. Neither of us have been to Wilkes-Barre, Pa. A coincidence? He saw it as proof that we didn't need the shot. I saw it as proof that I had immunity and he needed to get out more, mingle a little, meet some sick people.

Sadly, that vaccine has done nothing to immunize me from this virus. It is considered a "novel" flu virus not because it is fictional but because it is new to humans. So I want a shot. I'd even submit to the nasal spray, despite the fact that it might tickle a little, because I can take it.

I don't even need to get the flu to have the flu. All I need to know is the symptoms. I'm not a hypochondriac. I just have a very vivid imagination.

So to over-protective parents and health care workers demanding the right to make the wrong decision, I say what Gerald Ford might have said, right on. Because as each of you takes a stand, you stand aside. Apophis gets that much closer to Earth and I get that much closer to the front of the line.

Peter Callaghan writes for The News Tribune in Tacoma. E-mail him: peter.Callaghan@thenewstribune.com