Swine Flu Vaccine Restrictions Lifted

This article was written by Stephen Smith who is employed as a journalist for the Boston Globe.  It was published into the December 18th edition to the Globe this year. The author, Stephen Smith has great credentials for the assignment and writes without any bias. The article is a simple informative article. Smith has a very fair approach regarding the topic of the swine flu and simply states the facts in an interesting way.  The article discusses only how the Massachusetts restrictions on the swine flu vaccine have been lifted, although the swine flu is an epidemic disease affecting the entire United States and even countries outside of the United States. The swine flu has a very low mortality rate but there have been several cases of death over the last few months. Now that the vaccine is becoming far more prevalent, there will be far fewer cases of the swine flu over the preceding months. 

The article, entitled "H1N1 vaccine restrictions lifted," begins by stating that the restrictions on the swine flu vaccine were lifted on December 17th 2009 because many of the Massachusetts health officials said that the vaccine should be made available to anyone who wants it.  It goes on to talk about how before this, the vaccine was limited to people with the greatest risk of contracting the swine flu like children, pregnant women, people with diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. The reason this decision was made seems to be because the demand for the vaccine has recently gone down because a lot less people are getting sick now with the flu so people assume they might not need the vaccine anymore. The state public health commissioner, John Auerbach, said that the amount of available vaccines has doubled within the last three weeks because 2 million doses have just arrived.  This does not mean that the vaccine will now be readily available at any doctor's office for anyone who is interested, but it does mean that state officials are doing a lot more to make sure that everyone, not just certain people, can get the vaccine shortly if they wish. State officials say that by the end of the month they expect to have 2.8 million doses of the vaccine and that by the middle of January, they will have nearly the full amount destined for the state. 

 

In the article, Smith quotes Auerbach when he says "This does not mean immediately that there will be vaccine at a large public clinic or a doctor’s office, it will be available in a widespread way after the holidays.’’ The fact that Smith quotes the state health commissioner shows his attempts to clearly portray the news and not put a bias on the information but simply display the data in an interesting way. There are not conflicting view points in the article because it really is not an opinion piece at all, it simply states the information about the lifting of the restrictions on the swine flu vaccination. 

I think this article is highly informative and it is also really cool because in October we did a whole unit on the swine flu in class. When we talked about the swine flu and the vaccination in class we learned about the restrictions that were placed on it but it is cool how only two months later, I am now reading in the news paper about how those restrictions no longer exist in Massachusetts. I am very glad the ban has been lifted and now anyone who wants the vaccine can have it. 

Here's the link to the article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/18/h1n1_vaccine_restrictions_lifted/