The shortage, caused by delays in the vaccine manufacturing process<\/strong>, has put the president in exactly the situation he sought to avoid \u2014 one in which questions are being raised about the government\u2019s response. <\/font><\/p>\n Aware that the president would be judged on how well he handled his first major domestic emergency, the Obama administration left little to chance. It built a new Web site,<\/font> Flu.gov<\/a> \u2014 a sort of one-stop shopping for information about H1N1, the swine flu virus. It staged role-playing exercises for public health officials and members of the news media. <\/font><\/p>\n It commissioned<\/font> public service announcements<\/a>, featuring the fuzzy Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita singing in English and Spanish about \u201cthe right way to sneeze.\u201d The president added a swine flu update to his regular intelligence briefing \u2014 he also receives an in-depth biweekly memorandum on the prevalence of the disease worldwide and in the United States \u2014 and appeared in the Rose Garden to urge Americans to wash their hands.<\/font><\/p>\n Early on, Mr. Obama told his aides he wanted them to \u201clearn from past mistakes,\u201d said John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama\u2019s domestic security adviser, who has been coordinating the flu-preparedness effort. <\/font><\/p>\n Mr. Obama and his top aides studied earlier flu outbreaks, including one in 2004, when a vaccine shortage created a political problem for President George W. Bush, and another in 1976, when President Gerald R. Ford ordered a mass vaccination campaign for an epidemic that never materialized \u2014 and faced intense criticism for it. <\/font><\/p>\n In late June, Mr. Obama invited veterans of the 1976 effort to a private meeting in the White House Roosevelt Room, and asked what his own role should be. (Mr. Ford was photographed being vaccinated; Mr. Obama has not yet received his flu shot because children, pregnant women and people with underlying health conditions are being vaccinated first.)<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cWe talked very realistically,\u201d said Dr. David Mathews, who was Mr. Ford\u2019s health secretary, \u201cabout the fine line he has to walk in being responsive and showing people that he cares, and that the federal government is on top of the issue, and on the other hand not provoking undue fear or irrational responses.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n Dr. Mathews advised Mr. Obama, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be willing to take the criticisms for being over-prepared, because there\u2019s no defense for being underprepared.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n Now, with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that<\/font> H1N1 is widespread in 46 states<\/a>, public health experts and leading senators are giving the Obama administration only mixed grades. \u201cI would give them a B for performance so far,\u201d said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior associate at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who has advised the administration on pandemic planning.<\/font><\/p>\n The administration gets high marks for its public education campaign, as well as the scientific effort to develop and test a vaccine. \u201cThe vaccine was miraculously developed,\u201d said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who was chairman of an oversight hearing last week on the government\u2019s response to the outbreak.<\/font><\/p>\n But the administration, and in particular Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, have come in for strong criticism from those who say they created a false sense of expectations with overly optimistic predictions about the availability of the vaccine.<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that there are vaccine shortages is a huge problem,\u201d said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and co-chairwoman of last week\u2019s hearing with Mr. Lieberman. \u201cI believe the administration took the pandemic seriously, but I also believe administration officials were so determined to show that everything was under control that they sent the wrong signals about the adequacy of supplies of the vaccine.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n Ms. Sebelius has said she was relying on estimates from manufacturers, who reported in July that 120 million doses of vaccine would be available by the end of this month \u2014 a figure that was later lowered to 40 million doses, and then lowered again. She said Wednesday that 23.2 million doses had become available, including 9 million in the last week alone<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n I have to wonder here how Big Pharma could have been so far off as to promise 120 million doses and deliver a mere 23.2 million, less that 1\/5 the promised amount. One would certainly think that, given their expertise and experience in vaccines, they should have been able to peg the number quite accurately. And as Republicans are buzzing that this is further proof that government can\u2019t do health care, I frankly wonder if this was a set up. Did Big Pharma create this crisis to underscore their desire to kill health care reform? Considering how the GOP was so ready to point the finger of blame, were they in on it? Given the timing of Joe LIEberman\u2019s move, was he? I can\u2019t answer this yet. I have no proof. This is mere speculation, but it is based om compelling circumstantial evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was at the Doctor\u2019s office the other day, they told me they had to postpone my H1N1 Vaccine against GOP flu, because they cannot give the mist to anyone over 49, and they haven\u2019t received the shots. The vaccine shortage is a major problem, and Republicans are lining up to blame Obama. They\u2019re […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"GOP-flu\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/H1N1GOPFluVaccineWhytheShortage_39F0\/GOPflu.jpg\" "\\"GOP-flu\\"")
<\/a> The moment a novel strain of swine flu emerged in Mexico last spring, President Obama instructed his top advisers that his administration would not be caught flat-footed in the event of a deadly pandemic. Now, despite months of planning and preparation, a vaccine shortage is threatening to undermine public confidence in government, creating a very public test of Mr. Obama\u2019s competence.<\/font><\/p>\n