Virology Blog

My latest piece for Slate examines the unsettling consequences of the United States' choice of swine flu vaccines. The good news about these vaccines is that, to judge by the first vaccine trial results, published last week, they appear to work fast, safely â and at about a half to a quarter of the doses that the CDC expected. This means we effectively have about two to four times as many vaccines as we had figured we would. Since we ordered 195 million doses, we could vaccinate damn near the whole country. If the fast-tracking efforts continue to work and the flu peaks closer to Christmas…