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Anna-Liza Kozma
When it comes to the flu, parents are petri dishes too
Last Updated: Monday, November 9, 2009 | 1:45 PM ET
By Anna-Liza Kozma CBC News
Salutations to the brave parents who've been camping outside flu clinics around the country to get their kids vaccinated.
Wait times, it seems, have varied wildly from a mind-numbing eight and nine hours in Ottawa and Calgary to a mere 60 minutes or so in smaller places like Dieppe, N.B., and Sioux Lookout, Ont.
Anna-Liza Kozma has worked as a writer and producer on many CBC Radio programs. She has three young children and has just returned to work on Cross Country Checkup.
Truth be told, it's been the luck of the draw even in small towns like the one I live in north of Toronto where an empty car dealership was transformed into a vaccination clinic.
If you made the decision to get your kids the flu shot as soon as it was available that first week, the queues straggled for blocks.
If you waited until this past week, when the shortages appeared, you found that in most provinces kids over the age of five are not considered a priority.
"It's dammed if you do, and dammed if you don't," my babysitter, Margaret, told me as she spooned junior Tylenol into her son Jack, age 5.
Watching Spiderman
Jack was home from kindergarten that day with the dreaded "flu-like symptoms." He was sprawled, congested and miserable, on the couch watching Spiderman cartoons. So was his dad.
No one in Margaret's family had yet had the vaccine. The lineups made it impossible. So did some of the rules.
On Cross Country Checkup, a program I help produce, Penny McArrow described the problems she saw at the clinics in her hometown of Calgary.
"It could easily be -30 at this time of year," she said. "If you think you've got swine flu you're told to wait outside. If you're pregnant and you've got three or four little people, or if you're sick or elderly, it just doesn't work."
As McArrow also discovered, there is considerable confusion about priority groups and their caregivers.
Refusing to give a parent a vaccine, which takes about two minutes, doesn't make sense if they've lined up for hours with their kids.
They are only going to have to take up another spot in a later lineup, causing longer wait times for everyone else. And more aggro on the home front!
Eleven-month-old Abigail Gray-Donald gets the H1N1 vaccine in Ottawa on Monday, Nov. 2, 2009. Some cities are using numbered wrist bands to distinguish those in priority groups. (Pawel Dwulit/Canadian Press) Besides, as the Economist magazine argued recently, citing a study, the current, widespread policy of vaccinating the most vulnerable types first (such as infants and the elderly) may not be the most effective.
Better, the study said, to first vaccinate those who are statistically most likely to spread the virus/
That means schoolchildren and those between the ages of 30 and 40, who are probably the parents of those children.
We are the country's petri dishes.
The when question
Still, this current enthusiasm for getting the vaccine must be heartening for health-care workers who have spent weeks extolling the need for the shots.
Just three weeks ago, on the eve of the vaccine rollout, there were still many questions from anxious mums and dads who were unsure about the safety of the shots.
Now the questions to health officials are more pointed.
Like, do holistic medicines work? Answer, well, they haven't been studied to the same degree as mainstream drugs so you are taking your chances.
And, is there enough vaccine to go around? Answer: There's enough for everyone to get vaccinated by Christmas. You may get sick this month but the shot should protect you against later waves.
A pregnant mom
On Cross Country Checkup, Ontario's infectious disease expert, Dr. Michael Gardam, was asked by a pregnant mom with a pre-schooler at home whether she should get the flu shot before or after giving birth at the end of November.
Because women are most at risk from flu complications in the second half of pregnancy, and for several weeks after delivery, he suggested getting the shot and a prescription from her doctor for an anti-viral drug.
That way she could have relief close at hand in case she got sick.
He also told her that the whole family should get the H1N1 vaccine for maximum protection.
The problem with that, though, is that under the current rules only the expectant mom and her toddler are considered priorities.
Remember polio
On our show, we heard a range of views, including from people like Shirley Spiller in B.C. who had three friends who contracted polio in 1947 — before there was an effective vaccine — and who lived in West Africa for a time.
While there, "I saw these diseases because children were not vaccinated like mine were," she said. "And I do urge mothers with young children who are saying 'I'm not having that poison, or those chemicals put in my child' to think about the effect of what they are doing."
Meanwhile, most of today's parents continue to wrestle not so much with history but with practical questions.
When will the vaccine be available in my area for kids? If they've had a half dose, how long do we wait before the second?
Which friends can we drag along for company in the lineup? How much to spend on bribes?
Yes, the baby cried
My own kids scored $50 worth of Lego after my husband convinced our six- and eight-year olds to get the swine flu shot when it was still being given to kids of all ages in Uxbridge on Halloween morning.
The baby didn't get a prize. He didn't have a choice.
In the lineup ahead of them, my husband reported a doll-house set of mum, dad, grandma and grandpa clustered around the visible "greater priority" set of young children and baby for moral support.
It didn't help the kids' moods that while they waited in line for half an hour outside, and an hour inside the clinic, a teenage girl was carried out on a makeshift stretcher. She'd fainted from the sight of the needle.
By the time it was my eight-year-old son's turn he was curled in a fetal position against a wall and had to be prised off like a limpet.
Afterwards both kids pronounced the shot "not a big deal" and "only a little prick." The baby apparently cried for half a minute.
