The Swine Flu Vaccine Screw-Up

Barbara Ehrenreich: Faith In Private Enterprise And The Market Has Now Left Us Open To A Swine Flu Epidemic

(CBS)  Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 16 books, including the bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper's and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at the New York Times and Time magazine. Her seventeenth book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. An examination of recent studies of the medical ineffectiveness of positive thinking, mentioned in this essay, can be found in the book. This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch. To listen to the TomDispatch audio interview with Ehrenreich that accompanies this piece, click here.

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If you can't find any swine flu vaccine for your kids, it won't be for a lack of positive thinking. In fact, the whole flu snafu is being blamed on "undue optimism" on the part of both the Obama administration and Big Pharma.

Optimism is supposed to be good for our health. According to the academic "positive psychologists," as well as legions of unlicensed life coaches and inspirational speakers, optimism wards off common illnesses, contributes to recovery from cancer, and extends longevity. To its promoters, optimism is practically a miracle vaccine, so essential that we need to start inoculating Americans with it in the public schools -- in the form of "optimism training."

But optimism turns out to be less than salubrious when it comes to public health. In July, the federal government promised to have 160 million doses of H1N1 vaccine ready for distribution by the end of October. Instead, only 28 million doses are now ready to go, and optimism is the obvious culprit. "Road to Flu Vaccine Shortfall, Paved With Undue Optimism," was the headline of a front page article in the October 26th New York Times. In the conventional spin, the vaccine shortage is now "threatening to undermine public confidence in government." If the federal government couldn't get this right, the pundits are already asking, how can we trust it with health reform?

But let's stop a minute and also ask: Who really screwed up here -- the government or private pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and three others that had agreed to manufacture and deliver the vaccine by late fall? Last spring and summer, those companies gleefully gobbled up $2 billion worth of government contracts for vaccine production, promising to have every American, or at least every American child and pregnant woman, supplied with vaccine before trick-or-treating season began.

According to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the government was misled by these companies, which failed to report manufacturing delays as they arose. Her department, she says, was "relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers, and as soon as we got numbers we put them out to the public. It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy."

If, in fact, there's a political parable here, it's about Big Government's sweetly trusting reliance on Big Business to safeguard the public health: Let the private insurance companies manage health financing; let profit-making hospital chains deliver health care; let Big Pharma provide safe and affordable medications. As it happens, though, all these entities have a priority that regularly overrides the public's health, and that is, of course, profit -- which has led insurance companies to function as "death panels," excluding those who might ever need care, and for-profit hospitals to turn away the indigent, the pregnant, and the uninsured.

As for Big Pharma, the truth is that they're just not all that into vaccines, traditionally preferring to manufacture drugs for such plagues as erectile dysfunction, social anxiety, and restless leg syndrome. Vaccines can be tricky and less than maximally profitable to manufacture. They go out of style with every microbial mutation, and usually it's the government, rather than cunning direct-to-consumer commercials, that determines who gets them. So it should have been no surprise that Big Pharma approached the H1N1 problem ploddingly, using a 50-year old technology involving the production of the virus in chicken eggs, a method long since abandoned by China and the European Union.

Chicken eggs are fine for omelets, but they have quickly proved to be a poor growth medium for the viral "seed" strain used to make H1N1 vaccine. There are alternative "cell culture" methods that could produce the vaccine much faster, but in complete defiance of the conventional wisdom that private enterprise is always more innovative and resourceful than government, Big Pharma did not demand that they be made available for this year's swine flu epidemic. Just for the record, those alternative methods have been developed with government funding, which is also the source of almost all our basic knowledge of viruses.

So, thanks to the drug companies, optimism has been about as effective in warding off H1N1 as amulets or fairy dust. Both the government and Big Pharma were indeed overly optimistic about the latter's ability to supply the vaccine, leaving those of us who are involved in the care of small children with little to rely on but hope -- hope that the epidemic will fade out on its own, hope that our loved ones have the luck to survive it.

And contrary to the claims of the positive psychologists, optimism itself is neither an elixir, nor a life-saving vaccine. Recent studies show that optimism -- or positive feelings -- do not affect recovery from a variety of cancers, including those of the breast, lungs, neck, and throat. Furthermore, the evidence that optimism prolongs life has turned out to be shaky at best: one study of nuns frequently cited as proof positive of optimism's healthful effects turned out, in fact, only to show that nuns who wrote more eloquently about their vows in their early twenties tended to outlive those whose written statements were clunkier.

Are we ready to abandon faith-based medicine of both the individual and public health variety? Faith in private enterprise and the market has now left us open to a swine flu epidemic; faith alone -- in the form of optimism or hope -- does not kill viruses or cancer cells. On the public health front, we need to socialize vaccine manufacture as well as its distribution. Then, if the supply falls short, we can always impeach the president. On the individual front, there's always soap and water.

[fiat1lux]

Saying that the "free market" is responsible for the vaccine fiasco and using that as an argument for government controlled health care is seriously flawed logic. Even if business greed overstated production possibilities, one would hope that someone in the Department of Health and Human Services would have the basic knowledge that vaccine production estimates have a wide margin or error. Either no one in HHS knew that simple fact, or it was "politically convenient" to publicize these unrealistic vaccine arrival dates as certain. This whole situation bodes very poorly for any type of government controlled health care system.

[BobMarston]

Ehrenreich is not saying the "Free" Market is responsible. Ehrenreich is stating the pharmaceutical manufactures named in the article are responsible because they made false claims. How free the "Free" Market actually is with Antitrust Laws being a Dead Letter is open for discussion.

The scandal is compounded by the US Pharmaceutical Industry's obstinant refusal to upgrade a manufacturing technique first employed in the 1950s.

Just a little something to keep in mind the nest time you hear one of the Yahoo Teabaggers crow about America having "the best health care system in the world".

[jayldee2]

Why do we geve H1N1 vaccines to inmates before those with critical need for it. Just read this artical from the South Bend tribuine IN


The demand for the H1N1 vaccine continues to outstrip the supply in much of the area. That has prompted a closer look at how inmates may get the vaccine before some members of the general public.

Last week it was announced that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba would get the H1N1 vaccine, and other states throughout the country are also making it a priority to inoculate prison populations since the inmates live in such close proximity with one another, which makes it easier to spread the disease.

Elkhart parent Anna Zuniga drove to South Bend on Monday to have her children receive the H1N1 vaccine at a St. Joseph County Health Department immunization clinic.


"I was looking for H1N1 in Elkhart, and had to come all the way from Elkhart because we couldn't get it in Elkhart," she said.

In fact, Gwen Jaeger of the Elkhart County Health Department acknowledged that only one H1N1 immunization clinic has been held in the county for the public at large. That occurred on Oct. 20. But 220 doses of the vaccine are being made available for inmates and staff at the Elkhart County Jail, according to Jaeger and Trevor Wendzonka of the Elkhart County Sheriff's Department.

Wendzonka said the doses will be doled out soon based on the target groups that are being given high priority in the general public (people like pregnant women, healthy young people, and health care and emergency medical personnel).

"They are part of a target group. They're contained. They can't go anywhere to get the vaccine," Jaeger said.

She said the doses will not target the entire population of the jail.

A second public flu vaccination clinic will be held in Elkhart County on Wednesday. It will be from 1 to 5 p.m. (or until the vaccine runs out) at 608 Oakland Ave. in Elkhart. Only the nasal mist version of the H1N1 vaccine will be distributed at this clinic.

In St. Joseph County, Barb Baker of the health department said jail officials have asked for H1N1 vaccine for their inmates and for people on the work -release program.

"They're not higher on the list or lower on the list than any other group that we're trying to take care of," Baker said. "We have to look at all the populations. If they're in that target group, it doesn't matter where they live or where they're housed."

The young inmates at the Juvenile Justice Center in South Bend have not been immunized. However, an official there said the medical staff at the site will likely soon make a request for doses of the vaccine.

In LaPorte County, health department official Joanne Hardacker said her agency will be responsible for supplying doses of the H1N1 vaccine to the state prison in Michigan City and the Westville Correctional Center.

"We will shuttle vaccine to the prison system once the supply opens up," Hardacker said.

The LaPorte County Health Department has already provided immunizations at the Summit Farm, a state-run corrections site for juveniles. Hardacker said about a dozen doses were made available to the county juvenile detention center.

LaPorte County is holding four school-based H1N1 clinics this week. When asked why juvenile inmates in many cases are getting the vaccine before the county's K-12 school kids, Hardacker said, "That's a hard one."

She said the juvenile inmate populations are smaller, and require fewer doses than the schools.

"We understand the confusion the public has with this," Hardacker added.

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[UpNorthOutWest]

Your conclusion is that we need a massive government program instead of the free market? Give me a break. This is the fault of the Obama Administration's cluelessness and lack of preparation and understanding. They directed what be done and how to do it, and now they're pointing fingers of blame as they always do. If this was occurring with Bush as president instead of Obama, I have a feeling the media would be treating this flu vaccine debacle very much differently.

[chrisbieber]

the chaos is the LOGICAL conclusion of the unholy symbiosis of government and the marketplace...we fought AGAINST that idea/philosophy in WW2 and the Cold War...it was AND IS called Fascism....Mussolini said the same thing as the TomsDispatch shill...only in Italian.
The BioChem conglomerates are ALLOWED to exist by GOVERNMENT...and the govt controls and regimentation and PRICE AND DISTRIBUTION rules are demanded by the Big Conglomerates..as they can afford and can afford to obey the controls...but the smaller competitors WITH LESS Capital AND LESS FAVORITISM by the Fed Gov cant...and therefore can't compete...as Corporate SOCIALIST!!!!!! John D Rockefeller said.."Competition is a sin"..and he integrated his oilcompany and his controls into the government..at all levels...it was the dog wagging the tail.

This is corporatism...Mussolini(a stout Socialist) advocated it...
and our government(AND OUR CULTURE) is enacting it.

Whatever the (HIGH) probability this alleged pandemic was created the CONTROLS and RESPONSES and RESULTS of the FedGov, the controlled media, the false opposites political parties, the BioChem giants, and the masses of conditioned Americans are all following the usual plan/pages of script.

Straw-man arguments railing/blacing blame on "FreeMarket"(never been tried in US)and "Capitalism" dont fly here...logic, reason, and FACTS reject the statist ad hominums and emotive willful lies and misrepresentations of the statist government, and statist(all plugged into Medical and MediCare and HHS empire)health care FedGov appendages and willful shills like Ms Eirenreich.

[doc18d]

two weeks ago the story was that the Pharma companies did have setback cultivating thje virus strain. Two were 85% up to date with production and the other was on time. THe hold up was is the distribution link. The vaccines available were not being distributed. The distribution was taken over by the govt. Not the usual annual distribution methods used year in and year out with out fail by those terible greedy big pharma corps. Why would they want their product to actually be there in time.

[bobbyduck1]

"If, in fact, there's a political parable here, it's about Big Government's sweetly trusting reliance on Big Business to safeguard the public health: Let the private insurance companies manage health financing; let profit-making hospital chains deliver health care; let Big Pharma provide safe and affordable medications. As it happens, though, all these entities have a priority that regularly overrides the public's health, and that is, of course, profit -- which has led insurance companies to function as "death panels," excluding those who might ever need care, and for-profit hospitals to turn away the indigent, the pregnant, and the uninsured."

This is exactly why the only humane and effective solution to health care is a single payer, not-for-profit, government funded health care system. All other civilized countries have already grown up to this fact and they pay about 10% less of their GDP than we do for better health care. We lag, mostly due to heavy lobbying that serves no purpose other than to keep the extremely profitable status quo in place.

Thanks a lot, GOP and Blue Dog scum, for being our Public Enemy Number 1! True America-haters, one and all!

[mollydtt]

onevote--"GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and three others that had agreed to manufacture vaccine gleefully gobbled up 2 billion dollars worth of government contracts...."
This is from the article above. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think the pharmaceutical companies *GOT* their profit. They just didn't manufacture the vaccine for the rest of us.
This is capitalism at work, here. It was profitable for the companies to win the contracts. Period. They won.We lost.

[onevoteinwi]

were these american manufacturer or foreign, if vaccines were profitable they would be available, big optimistic governments need to allow the free market to prevail and then those laws of supply and demand would allow everyone in the world to get the vaccines, as it stands now the tax and spend philosophies are ruining more than middle america, If everyone dies of swine flu who will pay for that big government optimism. ironic maybe not

[tablet1-2009]

The message you missed is that the free market was allowed to prevail and it failed, again. As it would if "health reform" ended up in the hands of the private insurance marked. The companies featured on news shows are here in the USA.