Today we headed down to our local public health department’s swine flu…sorry H1N1 flu clinic to get Sweet Girl vaccinated. After planning ahead with a couple of local mama friends, we decided to arrive at noon despite the fact that the clinic wasn’t due to open until 4 p.m., and would you believe there were over a 100 people in line already when we showed up. The clinic was very efficient, well-organized, and the folks working were kind and understanding, but 4 and 1/2 looong hours is way too long to keep several toddlers entertained, especially when the culmination of the wait is a needle in the arm. Luckily, the shots were given in a huge, echo-ey room, thus the screams all melded into the general din, and none of the kids behind us were the wiser about what they were in for. I’m dreading getting her the second shot, but I have to admit, as much as I don’t want to buy into the media hysteria, there was a part of me that breathed a huge sigh of relief once it was over and done with.
Now here’s the part I feel uncomfortable with. It’s not about the question of whether or not to vaccinate, or whether thimerosal is actually kiddy-poison in disguise. When we looked around the room at 1,000 of our closest friends also waiting to be vaccinated, we noticed that the average socio-economic status of those around us averaged reasonably high. I obviously have no data to back this up as I wasn’t interrogating my fellow citizens about their annual income, but based on dress, mannerisms, etc., it seemed like a reasonable assumption. I would wager a guess that those of us who have expendable time and resources had a better chance of getting to a clinic in the middle of a work-day to get our kids, and in some cases (although not mine) ourselves vaccinated against this disease. So yeah, the H1N1 virus knows no socioeconomic bounds, but assuming this vaccine works (which I’d like to believe it does), are we looking at a situation where certain populations are going to be better-protected by virtue of their financial means and resources alone? And if we can make another gross generalization to say that those without means may have fewer opportunities to get vaccinated (and really, how many truly working-class people in a crappy economy have 4 hours to devote to something like this?) I think it would be fairly safe to say that they’re likely to be the same people who can’t afford the kind of medical care needed to successfully treat H1N1. I’m not sure if there’s a greater take-away point here, but it makes me wary and uncomfortable, and it seems worthwhile to put out there. So yeah, there you have it, Karl Marx on the swine flu.
