emmnn39-5551212

In a well- and carefully-written press release dated October 19, 2004, entitled, "Statement from the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada on the Influenza Vaccine Shortage in the US and Implications for Canada," recounts the origins of the current flu shot shortage in the U.S., discusses the provision of adequate amounts of flu vaccine for Canadians in Canada, and delicately points out that:

"If it appears that Canadians' needs are well met, if the licensing issues in the US are addressed, and there is a surplus supply, then Canada would be in a position to help. However, Canada's ability to provide assistance is limited by US licensing requirements and the requirements of public programs in Canada."

The Canadian provinces work with the federal government in Ottawa to determine the country's needs for flu vaccine, the federal government contracts with private companies (in this case ID Biomedical and Aventis) to provide the agreed-upon amount of vaccine, and then the federal government in Ottawa distributes that vaccine to the provinces, which themselves determine its ultimate disposition.

Dwindling supplies of commodities widely deemed essential to individual and national survival can often generate actions that rip apart community and international relations.

For example, on October 6, 2004, in an Etopia Media Medical News Network article entitled, "Black market in flu vaccine emerges, endangering those at risk," it was suggested that the scarcity of flu vaccine precipitated by Britain's MHRA's de-certification of Chiron Corporation's Liverpool, England, U.K., flu vaccine factory could lead to black market trafficking in a highly-valued commodity.

Two recent thefts of flu vaccine in the widely-separated locations of Baltimore, Maryland and Merced, California were each reported in the context of such a black market.

San Francisco's CBS-TV affiliate, KPIX reporting on the theft of 90 vials of flu vaccine, each containing approximately enough vaccine for ten shots, in the Central Valley of California's Merced said that, "The vials normally cost about $75 each, but because of the nationwide shortage, they could go for a lot more on the black market."

Once public supplies of Canadian flu vaccine are in the hands of its provincial health authorities, what's to stop neighboring U.S. states, or the U.S. federal government, from trying to "persuade" Canadian provincial health authorities to their north, on the basis of financial or more intangible reasons, that declaring some of their allotments "surplus" and turning them over to their counterparts in the United States would be beneficial to their overall relations with these important trading and tourism partners?

With the mountain (shipment of excess vaccine from Canada) looking, overall, less and less likely to be coming into the United States, it's becoming increasingly common for Mohammed (Americans wanting to get vaccinated against flu) to go to Canada to get it.

The Associated Press reported yesterday, for example, on Seattle-area residents lining up "before dawn" for a tourism-and-flu trip to British Columbia.

How long might it take for American visitors with exchange rate-enhanced dollars to use up a significant portion of private and then possibly publicly-allotted Canadian flu vaccine? How long might it take for the Canadian public and the Canadian public health and other government authorities to decide to take steps to protect their own dwindling supplies?

With the previous and on-going model of U.S. personal habits and government policy converging to lead, via a dependence on imported oil, to a pre-emptive war for oil in the Middle East, how long might it be before some form of "pre-emptive public health war," using economic and political leverage, emerges from Canada's infinitely more powerful southern neighbor, the United States? What, after all, could be more "pre-emptive" than getting a flu shot?

With the flu season just now getting underway (see the map above) and with rising gas prices and falling vaccine supplies featured daily on the news, how long might it be before the American sense of entitlement to more than anyone else of whatever the world has leads to the demonization of yet another country's leaders (some of whom are sort-of-French) and the (if-not-military-at-least-economic-and-political) invasion of that country in the name of "national (health) security" and, as President Bush likes to call it, "spreading liberty"?

Maybe not too likely, but in light of current word and action out of Washington, D.C., not outside the realm of possibility, either.

You can read the Public Health Agency of Canada press release of October 19, 2004, which may someday be distorted into an excuse for that invasion, in its entirety by clicking here.