{"id":4538,"date":"2013-11-06T14:59:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T19:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=4538"},"modified":"2013-11-20T18:48:39","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T23:48:39","slug":"front-porch-perspective-flu-shots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/front-porch-perspective-flu-shots\/","title":{"rendered":"FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE: Flu Shots"},"content":{"rendered":"

2009 Flu Shot Misery Revisited
\nBy Stephen Somerville<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the fall season upon us and the opening of the hockey season, it is time for me to begin looking in the local papers for the ads for the public flu shot locations.
\nWhen discussing this issue with my wife the other night, we were recalling the nightmare associated with the H1N1 flu-shot back in November 2009. I\u2019ll bet many of you also recall that time without much fondness, either.
\nI wrote two columns about it at the time; here are some excerpts.
\n\u201cTwo weeks ago my wife suggested that we should take our five-year old son to get the H1N1 flu-shot.
\n\u201cWe had both read the large advertisement in the Toronto Star newspaper \u201cthat stated \u201cFlu shots will be made available first to health care workers, pregnant women, people under sixty-five years of age with chronic medical conditions, children six months to five years old, those living in remote and isolated communities, as well as people living with or caring for those at high risk who cannot be immunized.\u201d
\n\u201cAs our son did not celebrate his sixth birthday until just after this Christmas, we therefore thought he qualified for the flu-shot.
\nIn addition, a friend of ours who has a son six months younger than my son had received the flu-shot the day before up in Newmarket.
\n\u201cThe clinic at Ray Twinney in Newmarket opened at 10 a.m. that Saturday morning. We arrived at the hockey arena at about 9:45 a.m. and there was a big line up of people.
\n\u201cHowever, we came prepared. We were wearing our winter jackets and toques, plus we had plenty of food with us as we thought the whole process would take five to seven hours.
\n\u201cAs well, I brought along a soccer ball and mini football to throw with Ryan.
\n\u201cOur line was slowly beginning to speed up and we could now see the door to the arena. We had now been in line for just over three hours and fifteen minutes.
\n\u201cA nurse then comes by and hands out a flyer to everyone in line and says that they are only giving flu-shots to the priority groups identified on the flyer.
\nThe flyer read something to the effect that only \u2018children under five years old\u2019 will receive the flu-shot.
\n\u201cThis is at odds with what the Toronto Star advertisement said, although I did not have a copy of the Star with me at the time.
\n\u201cMy wife asks the nurse about this situation and the nurse replies that the \u201cflu-shot will only be given today to children that are under five years old.\u201d
\n\u201cAs you can imagine, neither my wife nor I were happy at all with this development, but there is nothing we can do, so we head home.
\n\u201cMy question here: Why did we have to wait in line for over three hours before someone of authority came and told
\nus this?
\n\u201cEveryone understands that there are shortages of the vaccine and everyone understands that there will be long line-ups. And all of us can very much appreciate the pressure the nurses and public officials are under, but the stupidity associated with the organizing of this clinic was not and is not acceptable.
\n\u201cInstead of any explanation, fixing the problem before we have to line up again in a few weeks would be a most welcome solution.\u201d
\nFrom my second column:
\n\u201cWhat a difference two weeks make!
\n\u201cI arrived at 5:50 pm and this time there were no long line-ups around the building. In fact, I walked right into the arena. There were about seventy-five people in front of me.
\n\u201cThere seemed to be more security personnel and York Region health care staff on hand this time. The line moved fairly quickly.
\nI was in the room where they do the inoculations within forty minutes.
\n\u201cFrom the time I walked into the building until the time I left was just under one hour.
\n\u201cI had planned to end this column with something pithy like, \u2018I guess my column did the trick!\u2019 but that would not really be fair to the health care staff.
\n\u201cStanding in line those two days gave me lots of time to think.
\n\u201cI am wonder about our emergency preparedness capability. Think back to the energy blackout a couple of summers ago, or the ice storm in eastern Ontario and Quebec.
\n\u201cAre our public authorities prepared for a number of different types of calamitous events or scenarios, like if an outbreak of some disease occurred?
\n\u201cBased on what I personally witnessed these past couple of weeks and what I saw on television and in the newspapers, I am not so sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

I do hope our public officials learned from this event four years ago and will be prepared in the future.<\/p>\n

Stephen can be contacted at stephengsomerville@yahoo.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2009 Flu Shot Misery Revisited By Stephen Somerville With the fall season upon us and the opening of the hockey season, it is time for me to begin looking in the local papers for the ads for the public flu shot locations. When discussing this issue with my wife the other night, we were recalling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1bc","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 18:31:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}