The Flu Situation

Asian flu by last week had attacked an estimated 400,000 people in the U.S. Though manufacturers were pouring out vaccine far faster than expected (3,700,000 doses last week), there was a serious snarl over who was to get the inoculations and when. With only voluntary priorities suggested by Washington, most of the vaccine (which often caused a slight feverish reaction) so far seemed to have been sold to anyone who went after it early and energetically enough, notably football teams and business concerns.

The Priorities. San Francisco's pro Forty-Niners and the Stanford and University of California football squads got their shots; so did clerks in the local Dun & Bradstreet office and stenographers of the Retail Credit Co. City employees in the police, fire, water, and transportation departments got none. Almost identical reports came from a dozen other cities, including Washington. The District of Columbia had received only 3,000 shots for workers in the capital's essential services; some Federal Government workers were vaccinated without regard to essential status.

By and large, doctors and nurses got their shots early, as recommended by the U.S. Public Health Service. The armed forces, on a separate allocation, were getting vaccine as fast as they could use it. Beyond that, the PHS planners' hope that manufacturers would funnel the vaccine to essential civilians was generally ignored. Last week Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney held a conclave of experts in Washington, issued another hopeful suggestion: that manufacturers would henceforth comply with allocation recommendations by state health departments.

The Outlook. Meanwhile, the disease spread across the U.S. without consistent geographical pattern: the outbreaks were like separate, spontaneous grass fires. Perhaps because of crowded living conditions, Negroes in the South seemed especially susceptible. Climate made no difference. One of the states hardest hit, after bottomland Mississippi (with 100,000 cases), was mile-high Colorado, where health officers saw no hope of checking the flu's ravages before 10% of the population has had it. In all the U.S. only 16 deaths were so far attributed to complications of the disease (mostly pneumonia).

Best estimates are that the epidemic will strike most of the U.S. in full force before October's end, and that for the majority of the population vaccination will be too late to give protection against early attacks. By midwinter it may do more good. Some San Francisco doctors, however, declared the vaccine is only 50% effective. Shooting from the hip, they charged that the whole vaccination program was a piece of engineered hysteria to promote vaccine sales. Said Medical Society President Donald M. Campbell: "I'm giving vaccine only to relieve near-hysteria."

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