Tell us: What is happening in your area with swine flu?

I'm sure a lot of administrator overtime was logged and billed to discuss this little boy's pocket knife. He will be locked out of every honors program and carry this stigma for life. Perhaps the safest thing is to simply lock every little boy out of school.

Our hospitals are closing their doors to young visitors as a preventive measure. So far Fort Wayne has provided a few thousand younsters with the nasal H1N1 spray. Also churches have taken appropriate measures. The Catholic church will not offer wine to it's parishoners for the duration of the flu season. I think the school and the local TV have done a great job with spreading the word to prevent unreasonable fear.

We don't know what to think - and there is a lot of misinformation out there. The wash your hands message is working in my household but that's about it. Our schools have kids with swine flu. There is no vaccine available right now. I have been doing research on sites like feelingflu.com, mayo clinic, and others which provide information I can use. I know what the symptoms are now. But mostly we are just counting on the fact that both kids have always had really healthy immune systems. Yet healthy kids are the ones hardest hit. There are far more questions than answers.

We are all waiting for the vaccine. Meanwhile, more and more students are absent from school, or are being sent home with flu-like symptoms. It reminds me of the government's response to Katrina - too little, too late. Now it is swine flu. Too little, too late. 100-million vaccines by October. Oops, it is actually 20-million. And to think that congress is considering getting the federal government more involved in providing health care. What will we have to wait for then?

In answer to the initial question, our area is finally starting to get "some" vaccine , and it is being distributed to physician's offices, schools and I think even some of the little "clinics" now popping up in every pharmacy, Walmart, etc. I am a Pediatrician in a group practice and we have 2 offices. One of our offices has received a fair number of doses, but our other office is still waiting for its shipment to arrive. We have started holding "flu clinics" where we, after regular office hours, have a large number of our nurses there to administer vaccine. We have been keeping our patients updated as to the availability of the vaccine via our web site, as well as by phone calls. And we have been making lists of the patients who need it the most, for example those with severe asthma or heart disease, and trying to get them in as quickly as possible. It is frustrating that it has been slow in coming, and coming in bits and pieces, but I wish people like M Clem would stop trying to link any of these problems to the federal government. If he and those of his persuasion would get off their band wagon of everything the govt does is wrong, and just think about it, or maybe read a newspaper, it is perfectly obvious that the problem with the late vaccine delivery is to do with the drug manufacturers who are making it. They were too optimistic in their initial statements as to how much vaccine and how soon it would be ready. It's constantly in the news how the yield of virus from the cultures has not yielded as much as they had projected, but I do not doubt they're doing their best to get it out. The virus didn't rear it's head til quite abit after the time that the making of the flu vaccine for this winter had begun - which is why it was not incorporated into the seasonal flu vaccine "package". That vaccine had already been started in production when people realized that H1N1 was going to be a problem. Our government put in our order just as quickly as could be expected, reacted in due haste, but this is a new product that has to be made, and you can't hurry the process of incubating/growing the virus in culture. And this is the first time in my memory in which our government is paying for the vaccine, only leaving the cost of the administration fee for the patient or their insurance, so that everyone, whether insured or not, should be able to get it, once enough is available. Unfortunately, the disease has not been waiting, and with children back in school, obviously that's where a large proportion of the spread is occurring. We have been seeing hundreds of cases over the past few weeks, but it really is no different than any other flu. And my second peeve after the ridiculous blaming of the govt. for the slowness of the response, is that the media has gotten people in a panic by giving out the numbers of deaths without giving out the numbers of cases. For example, almost no one has any immunity to H1N1, unlike some of the other flu viruses that have been around before, and so the number of cases is higher. And if one year you get many more cases of people contracting the illness, even with the same percentage of people coming down with complications, there will be a higher number of them as well. For example, 1% of 100,000 is 1000, but 1% of 1,000,000 is 10,000. And what the media does not supply us with when they say there are more cases this year than last (and last year we had a very short and mild flu "season") is the denominator of the equation, so we have no way of knowing if the percentage of people infected who become more seriously ill is lower, higher or the same as with previous years and different flu viruses. Thus far, from what I've seen, I'd have to say it seems either the same or even lower than in previous years. So unless the virus decides to mutate and become a more severe threat, and with the govt. just today announcing that they will release the remainder of the liquid Tamiflu they had been holding in case of a bioterrorism attack, hopefully, except for a lot of students missing alot of school - and Halloween parties, we will probably come out of all this with a few more gray hairs, but otherwise just fine or at least in no worse shape than in previous years when the flu hits. And, oh, from what I read in the paper today, the U.S. is in no worse shape than any of the other countries who had ordered vaccine. It's been slow coming everywhere - we weren't singled out.

Last Friday, our Walgreens pharmacy in Fayetteville, NC received 100 doses of the H1N1 vaccine. I am a healthy 31 year old woman and according to the H1N1 information pamphlet, I am not in the high risk category. I asked the pharmacist if I should get it. The pharmacist said they were not given instructions on how to administer the vaccine. The pharmacy was going to give it out on a first come first served basis and they were going to give it to me.

I chose to not receive the vaccine until more becomes available. But I worry that this pharmacy is a small example of what might be the larger ill administration of the vaccine across the country.