Specifically I turn on the Today show in the morning because that's the least revolting to my senses so I can find out if anything major happened overnight.

I'm still pretty much on my complete news hiatus that started when we started bombing Iraq and pick and choose what I read about online.

Unfortunately I suspect the majority of the population still watches the teevee news and reacts accordingly.

I'm actually not getting the vaccine, but mostly because I typically have a bad reaction to them... not flu reaction, but I think it's linked to my mild egg allergy. I've had two in my life, and the most recent was a few years ago when J was on a medication that brought his immune system down.

Now, if I was high-risk, or J was in that situation again, I'd consider it, but otherwise, no. The fact that there's H1N1 doesn't change that. At all.

So I just make sure that I wash my hands, use alcohol-based hand sanitizers (hate the gel stuff, as it's kind of sticky and doesn't dry as fast as it should to really get the job done, so I use a spray), and just take general precaution. I've had two people in my office get diagnosed, and one that didn't get tested, but his doc said "it's probably what you have, but you're not high-risk, so we're not testing you." It didn't seem toooo bad compared to regular flu.

After waiting in a long line, I got de-swined Saturday. Hopefully, my immunity kicks in before I get sick from the symptomatic person ahead of me who was pulled out of the line.

I happened to sneeze as a triage worker passed by, and she grilled me as to whether I was sick. I convinced her I wasn't, so I got to stay in line. However, I also heard rumors that the symptomatic people, rather than being denied shots, were going to the head of the line. (Links! Recht!)

I was thinking about way back when every kid had to have a polio vaccine, you went to the local elementary school gym and lined up. Every kid got a sugar cube with the dose dripped on to it. Either the vaccine cost nothing or it was nominal, like $1.

The government was serious about eradicating polio, a very serious disease. I realize H1N1 is no polio but young people have died from it. Why are we not making this vaccine available at every elementary school gym? Why are we not making the vaccine free or available for a nominal fee, instead of the $24.95 (charged to insurance, if you have it)?

Then this morning, NPR did a piece about the manufacturing snafu (not the right word because it has to do with inability to pre-determine yield/potency) that lead to L.A. getting only 300,000 doses for an area of 6 million, for example. Read the piece here.

I'd wager that back then there were fewer people who questioned the "governments ulterior motives" when it came to the vaccine and took it because it needed to be done.

The problem with so many of the diseases these days is their ability to quickly mutate thanks to the overuse of sanitizers and anti-bacterial agents. If Polio was still around I suspect it would keep mutating making the eradication of it more difficult. It wouldn't be surprising to see more and more cases of diseases that were thought to be nearly eradicated due to the increasing numbers of people who aren't being vaccinated.

You can file the mistrust of government under Nothing New under the Sun. For example, the next town over to where I live refused to fluoridate for two decades. The Water Department began adding fluoride to
the city’s water in 1950. They waited a month to tell residents, fueling rumors of communist plots. Those conspiracy rumors are still around. It wasn't until 1972 that the voters allowed fluoride in the city's water.

My insurance never seems to cover flu vaccine. I really don't understand why. I'm high risk. Hopefully, I have some immunity to the H1N1 now. I'm still going to try to get the shots at some point.

Isn't $1 in the Polio vaccine era pretty much equal to $25 today??

You have a good point, iSm. I'll pick 1964 because I can remember the polio sugar cubes and I was 7 that year. This inflation calculator sez $1 in 1964 is $6.80 today.