John, your doctor may want to read this, seems the CDC has plans...imagine that.

2009 H1N1 Vaccination Recommendations

>>>Just Googled 'best healthcare system in the world'? and by the the World Health Organisation's Standards....not Stoops Standards, here is the list:

WHO, a UN organization, has its own "standards" by which "best" is determined - which is no different than the rest of us having our own standards.

What constitutes "best" anyway? Universal coverage? Treatment? Quality of care? Research and innovation? Prevention?

Without getting into a political rant here, it appears that some folks believe that everyone having access to the same medical care constitutes "best."

While equal access may indeed be an issue, that access may be to a medical system that still uses leeches to cure disease -- i.e. the matter of quality of care is essentially ignored by subscribing solely to the "access" criteria.

Quality of care, in turn, is driven principally by two factors - co$t and effectiveness.

Effectiveness is achieved because medications and techniques are developed and perfected. I wouldn't be alive today absent the ability for a doctor to look into an artery, locate and then effectively reduce a blockage. 

Those tecniques and the sophisticated equipment that enables a skilled cardiologist to work this miracle had to be invented and perfected --- and that takes $$. They sure as hell didn't come with the proverbial apple tree in the Garden of Eden.

I remember my father and grandfather discussing the flu epidemic in this country at the end of WWI - and that the local ice house and the freezers at Bishop's Cafeteria were converted into morgues because there were hundreds and hundreds of bodies and no place to store them.

Today - back to the start of this entire thread - flu is a discomfort but is rarely fatal anymore. Even swine flu has a relatively low mortality rate - especially contrasted with the common flu epidemic of 1918. I even remember an outbreak of Asiatic Flu in the early 60s that put thousands in the hospital and then in dormitory beds at universities because the hospitals overflowed - and a relatively low death rate.

My point? Effectiveness of treatment not only reduces the death rate, continued research also eradicates diseases. Anyone remember the huge polio epidemic in the summer of 1945? I sure do - and the loss of 2 cousins and a brother. When is the last time anyone heard of a death caused by polio?

Effective treatment needs infrastructure and tools by which it is delivered - old Doc Sutton doesn't come to your house, black bag and all, in a horse and buggy anymore. Hospitals have replaced leeches with the latest drugs.

Where do these modern hospitals, drugs, and diagnostic devices come from? Surely not the gummit -- they come from research programs that you and I pay pennies on the dollar for every time we use them.

So, I respectfully submit that WHO can't determine "best" any more than I can. WHO's basis is not prevention, rather it is cure. I think they have the cart and horse a bit confused.

Again - back to the start of this thread - innoculation against swine flu is prevention!

Every government health agency knew in April that we were susceptible to a massive outbreak again starting as early as September - so while an incubation period necesary to produce vaccines exists, we started with full knowledge of what the effective vaccine is, we had the cultures, and we knew the process by which it would be manufactured.

So why is it necessary for the gummit to now prioritize youngsters? Simply because, as gummits do, they sat on their hands instead of going balls-out to produce more vaccine.  This has nothing to do with Blue's "chosen ones" and everything with governmental inertia - and proclivity to do our thinking for us.