'Good on ordinary Torontonians. Despite all the H1N1/swine flu hype this past winter, just 28.2% of that city’s residents bothered to get vaccinated against the “pandemic;” that’s less than the 35% who usually get shots each year against the seasonal flu. Even Toronto health care workers couldn’t be stampeded into getting the shots. Only 60% of them bothered.
Barbara Yaffe, head of communicable disease control for the Toronto Board of Health, proclaimed herself reasonably satisfied with the public’s response. But how can she be? Given the $1-billion+ spent by Ottawa on the swine flu hysteria (which probably climbs to $2 billion or more when provincial and municipal campaigns are added in), a 28% vaccination rate is awful if your aim is to have as many people immunized as possible. The 35% rate most winters is achieved at a fraction of the expense and public calamity. So hear, hear to those who resisted the madness that was the Great 2009-10 Swine Flu Pandemic...Read more:
