LOS ANGELES — The top public health official in Los Angeles County stood at a swine flu vaccination site in Compton, Calif., on Tuesday and gently told elderly residents that they really ought to go home.
“I explained to people 65 or older, ‘The reason we are doing this is for children,’ ” said the official, Jonathan E. Fielding, the director of the county’s Department of Public Health. “I told them: ‘They are at very high risk for this flu, and you’re at low risk. I am sure you wouldn’t want to get a shot that left a kid who is at risk in harm’s way.’ ”
People have lined up in Southern California and across the country in recent days in the hope of getting a prick in the arm, but a dearth of the H1N1 vaccine has created an unexpected dynamic: local government officials, hospital workers and doctors in private practice are being conscripted as ad hoc swine flu police.
The goal is to make sure that those Americans with the highest risk for contracting the virus — and experiencing the more dangerous complications that can ensue — get injected first. But the somewhat willy-nilly nature of the vaccine’s distribution in some areas, publicity surrounding President Obama’s declaration of a national emergency and the rather large population legitimately considered high risk have brought hundreds of thousands of people to vaccine distribution points.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/health/28flu.html?th&emc=th