Instead, doctors Jan Medlock and Alison Galvani argue that “it would be better to concentrate on vaccinating those most likely to spread the virus—both schoolchildren and people between the ages of 30 and 40, who are likely to be the parents of those children, and who are, at the moment, at the bottom of the vaccination priority list.”

I found the model on which they based the research to be of particular interest. While conventional thinking would have approached the study from a micro-physiological perspective, these doctors chose to examine it from the standpoint of economic impact. They used the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and the less deadly 1957 flu as case studies to ascertain what “adjusted” death tolls would have been if vaccination standards were different.

With the H1N1 virus purportedly making a comeback in the Fall, we will see how much credence the Center For Disease Control will give to this study. Coincidentally, “the new advice agrees more closely with the recommendations of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices about the best approach to the epidemic of N1H1 swine flu that is now circulating.” Regardless of the official vaccination protocol, experts agree this flu season could be a particularly serious one.

[image via jothenomad]