The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dispatched swine flu "mythbusters" across the United States to correct what it says are rumors and misconceptions about the H1N1 virus and the new swine flu vaccine reaching American clinics this week.
Their task won't be easy. Despite a US vaccination regimen that public health officials widely regard as a success, a distrust of government scientists in general and of vaccinations in particular pervades large swaths of America, according to recent polls.
The vaccine is opposed, moreover, by naturopaths and even a well-known epidemiologist, Tom Jefferson, who has deemed H1N1 "not a major threat."
"[T]here are a lot of rumors out there and we're trying to address them, that we're expecting a very good safety track record for H1N1 vaccine," said Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, at a news conference Friday.
While the share of people concerned about swine flu has jumped from 38 percent in June to 52 percent now, 41 percent of respondents still say they definitely will not get the flu shot, according to a recent Harvard Opinion Research poll. A Consumer Reports poll found that two-thirds of US parents have reservations about giving the vaccine to their children.
In response, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has mounted a public relations offensive to try to ease fears about the vaccine. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the rounds of morning TV shows and also appeared Friday at Dodge Park Elementary School in Landover, Md., to help administer the vaccine to school kids.
One message in the $3 billion campaign to get nearly half of all Americans inoculated: "A decision not to get vaccinated isn't a decision that is risk-free, but a decision to take on a different set of risks," Glen Nowak, a CDC spokesman, told the Monitor.
CDC director Thomas Frieden at a press conference this week addressed what he considered the top three misconceptions:
•Swine flu isn't a mild illness as many people believe, he said, "but can knock you out for a day or two or three" and can, for some, be fatal.
•Fears that the vaccine is unsafe, experimental, and that corners were cut in its production are untrue, Mr. Frieden asserts. "My children will get it, and other public health and societal leaders will get it and have their families get it."
•Many Americans believe the vaccine is arriving too late to be effective. But Frieden says, "We don't know what the long flu season is going to hold."
This week, the Monitor reported that a heated debate has emerged about individuals' rights and responsibilities in deciding whether to receive the vaccine.
The debate is reflected in Facebook pages and chat rooms that are lighting up with the question, "Should I get it?"
Reports of neurological side effects among some vaccine recipients during the 1976 swine flu outbreak hardened some Americans against flu vaccines, even though health officials say those risks are minimal today.
These days, skeptics have much bigger stages, namely cable TV and the Internet, on which to air their doubts. Fox News' Glenn Beck has devoted hours this week to asking whether people should get the vaccine, and why the World Health Organization, "Big Pharma," and the government are hyping a pandemic that seems less virulent than officials had predicted.
Jennifer Edmondson of Appleton, Wis., the mother of a 13-year-old, reflects a more common concern. "The flu caused by H1N1, in general, has been found to be no more dangerous than other types of flu," she writes in an e-mail. "My reluctance is not based on any distrust of our federal government, [but] rather, on my analysis of the necessity of the shot."
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Swine flu vaccine: Is it ethical to say no?
csmonitor.com
Friday, 9 October 2009
Swine Flu Event Shows Mass Vaccine Rejection
A U.S. government media event to promote H1N1 school vaccinations on Friday included VIPs, cute kids and a phalanx of television cameras -- but only one in five children at the school had proper parental consent to get immunized.
"This school was ready to go," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared after touring a makeshift vaccination clinic in the cafeteria at Dodge Park Elementary School, near Washington.
But 80 percent of the student body were ineligible for vaccinations due to missing paperwork during the day-long swine flu clinic.
Federal officials did not want to discuss the turnout. It underscored the challenge facing the U.S. government's $6.4 billion immunization effort which involves the widespread use of schools as vaccine clinics for the first time in a generation.
H1N1 poses a greater danger of severe illness and death for children and young people than seasonal flu, which is particularly dangerous for the elderly.
Only about 20 percent of U.S. children get vaccinated against seasonal flu in a typical year. Some parents, including many at Dodge Park Elementary, are holding back on H1N1 vaccination because of worries about the newness of the vaccine -- concerns that health officials say are unfounded.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that 76 U.S. children have died from H1N1 since April, with widespread swine flu in 37 states.
Most victims had underlying disease but 20 to 30 percent were healthy before they contracted swine flu.
This death toll compares with 46 to 88 pediatric deaths for entire flu seasons over the past three years, the CDC said.
250 MILLION DOSES
Dodge Park is among the first schools in the United States to serve as a clinic for student vaccinations as the government rolls out up to 250 million doses of vaccine by year end.
There will be some 90,000 vaccination sites nationwide including doctors' offices, clinics, hospitals and stores.
Federal officials have cautioned that the early weeks of the immunization program could be bumpy as state and local health departments cope with the strain.
One problem at Dodge Park was bureaucratic. Dozens of children could not get immunized because their parents submitted incomplete consent forms, officials said.
Another was that the only vaccine on offer was AstraZeneca (AZN.L) unit MedImmune's nasal spray, which is unsuitable for children with underlying conditions such as asthma. Injectable vaccine is due to become available next week.
But school officials said the main barrier was the safety concern.
"Many parents are not comfortable with it. They'd like to see more testing," school nurse Irene Campbell explained after helping to immunize 107 students out of a student body of 510.
Popular safety concerns are frustrating for public health officials, who say clinical trials show the new vaccine to be as safe and effective as seasonal flu vaccinations.
"It's very safe. Although the virus is new, the vaccine is not new. It's made exactly the way seasonal flu is made year in and year out," Sebelius said.
Reuters.com
"This school was ready to go," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared after touring a makeshift vaccination clinic in the cafeteria at Dodge Park Elementary School, near Washington.
But 80 percent of the student body were ineligible for vaccinations due to missing paperwork during the day-long swine flu clinic.
Federal officials did not want to discuss the turnout. It underscored the challenge facing the U.S. government's $6.4 billion immunization effort which involves the widespread use of schools as vaccine clinics for the first time in a generation.
H1N1 poses a greater danger of severe illness and death for children and young people than seasonal flu, which is particularly dangerous for the elderly.
Only about 20 percent of U.S. children get vaccinated against seasonal flu in a typical year. Some parents, including many at Dodge Park Elementary, are holding back on H1N1 vaccination because of worries about the newness of the vaccine -- concerns that health officials say are unfounded.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that 76 U.S. children have died from H1N1 since April, with widespread swine flu in 37 states.
Most victims had underlying disease but 20 to 30 percent were healthy before they contracted swine flu.
This death toll compares with 46 to 88 pediatric deaths for entire flu seasons over the past three years, the CDC said.
250 MILLION DOSES
Dodge Park is among the first schools in the United States to serve as a clinic for student vaccinations as the government rolls out up to 250 million doses of vaccine by year end.
There will be some 90,000 vaccination sites nationwide including doctors' offices, clinics, hospitals and stores.
Federal officials have cautioned that the early weeks of the immunization program could be bumpy as state and local health departments cope with the strain.
One problem at Dodge Park was bureaucratic. Dozens of children could not get immunized because their parents submitted incomplete consent forms, officials said.
Another was that the only vaccine on offer was AstraZeneca (AZN.L) unit MedImmune's nasal spray, which is unsuitable for children with underlying conditions such as asthma. Injectable vaccine is due to become available next week.
But school officials said the main barrier was the safety concern.
"Many parents are not comfortable with it. They'd like to see more testing," school nurse Irene Campbell explained after helping to immunize 107 students out of a student body of 510.
Popular safety concerns are frustrating for public health officials, who say clinical trials show the new vaccine to be as safe and effective as seasonal flu vaccinations.
"It's very safe. Although the virus is new, the vaccine is not new. It's made exactly the way seasonal flu is made year in and year out," Sebelius said.
Reuters.com
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Backstreet Boys cancel tour Brian Littrell diagnosed with Swine Flu
The Backstreet Boys have cancelled several promotional appearances in New York after member Brian Littrell has been diagnosed with swine flu, the band said in a statement Monday.
The singer and his bandmates, Nick Carter, Howie Dorough and AJ McLean, and touring crew were prescribed Tamiflu as a preventative measure while Littrell, 34, recovers.
The group was scheduled to appear at New York's Hard Rock Café on Monday for the NYC PINKTOBER event. The Backstreet Boys, who are due to release their seventh album, This Is Us, on Tuesday, were also scheduled to perform their new single "Straight Through My Heart" on CBS's The Early Show that same day.
"We were really looking forward to spending time with our closest fans and friends in NYC and take part of PINKTOBER, an unbelievable and important program" Littrell says in a statement. "I hope we can come back soon and do everything we can to help."
No other details about the Backstreet Boys' promotional schedule were available.
The singer and his bandmates, Nick Carter, Howie Dorough and AJ McLean, and touring crew were prescribed Tamiflu as a preventative measure while Littrell, 34, recovers.
The group was scheduled to appear at New York's Hard Rock Café on Monday for the NYC PINKTOBER event. The Backstreet Boys, who are due to release their seventh album, This Is Us, on Tuesday, were also scheduled to perform their new single "Straight Through My Heart" on CBS's The Early Show that same day.
"We were really looking forward to spending time with our closest fans and friends in NYC and take part of PINKTOBER, an unbelievable and important program" Littrell says in a statement. "I hope we can come back soon and do everything we can to help."
No other details about the Backstreet Boys' promotional schedule were available.
Elite Fashion Photographer Irving Penn, Dead
Irving Penn, a grand master of American fashion photography whose "less is more" aesthetic, combined with a startling sensuality, defined a visual style that he applied to designer dresses and fleshy nudes, famous artists and tribal chiefs, cigarette butts and cosmetics jars, has died. He was 92.
Many of Penn's now-famous photographs are owned by leading art museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, which in 1996 obtained the photographer's archive of 134 master and vintage prints plus proof sheets, correspondence and other documents. Most recently, a selection of his photographs was on view in "The Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today," an exhibit at the Art Institute that closed Sept. 20. Penn died Wednesday at his apartment in New York City, said his brother, film director Arthur Penn. The cause was not given.
Penn started contributing to Vogue in 1943 and became one of the first commercial photographers to cross the chasm that separated commercial and art photography until the 1970s. He did so, in part, by using the same technique no matter what he photographed -- isolating his subject, allowing for scarcely a prop and building a work of graphic perfection through his printing process.
Critics considered the results to be icons, not just images, each one greater than the person or the object in the frame.
"In Penn's photographs, generations of brilliant artists and lovely young women are endowed with dignity for their enduring moment," wrote fashion critic Kennedy Fraser in a 2007 Vogue magazine tribute to Penn when he was 90.
He was a purist who mistrusted perfect beauty, which brought an engaging tension to his fashion photographs as well as his still lifes and portraits. One of his best-known shots for Vogue magazine in the 1950s shows an impeccably dressed model glancing sideways through a veil that covers her face, as if she isn't ready for her close-up.
In another famous shot, this one from the 1990s, bright red lips drip with gooey chocolate. Suddenly, the dessert world's favorite food looks very unappealing.
Penn's most familiar photographs are the cosmetics ads he shot for Clinique that have appeared in magazines since 1968. Each image is a balancing act of face cream jars, astringent bottles and bars of soap that threatens to collapse.
Despite an obvious appreciation for the art and craft of a beautifully made dress, Penn strained against the unreachable world it represents. To escape it, or contest it perhaps, in the late 1960s he started photographing crushed cigarette butts and street debris.
Some reviewers found Penn's cigarette butts pretentious when they were displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975. Many questioned whether anything by a fashion photographer belonged in an art museum. A similar debate stewed during an exhibit of Penn's photos of urban debris at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1977.
Far-sighted reviewers, however, praised Penn's ability to turn discarded objects into art. "Each distinct, dirty, torn and ragged reject has been carefully selected, isolated, enlarged and transmuted from a cultural throwaway into a haunting iconic artifact," an Art News review concluded in 1977.
Penn stayed above the fray and photographed what he wanted. Hells Angels in leather and chrome and famouswriters received the same painstaking treatment.
"He didn't worry about questions of art versus commerce," said Colin Westerbeck, former photography curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. "Photography is a mass medium available to anyone. A few geniuses, like Irving Penn, redeem it," Westerbeck said in a 2003 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Besides his brother, Penn is survived by a son, Tom, and a stepdaughter, Mia Fonssagrives-Solow. Tribune staff contributed to this report.
chicagotribune.com
Many of Penn's now-famous photographs are owned by leading art museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, which in 1996 obtained the photographer's archive of 134 master and vintage prints plus proof sheets, correspondence and other documents. Most recently, a selection of his photographs was on view in "The Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today," an exhibit at the Art Institute that closed Sept. 20. Penn died Wednesday at his apartment in New York City, said his brother, film director Arthur Penn. The cause was not given.
Penn started contributing to Vogue in 1943 and became one of the first commercial photographers to cross the chasm that separated commercial and art photography until the 1970s. He did so, in part, by using the same technique no matter what he photographed -- isolating his subject, allowing for scarcely a prop and building a work of graphic perfection through his printing process.
Critics considered the results to be icons, not just images, each one greater than the person or the object in the frame.
"In Penn's photographs, generations of brilliant artists and lovely young women are endowed with dignity for their enduring moment," wrote fashion critic Kennedy Fraser in a 2007 Vogue magazine tribute to Penn when he was 90.
He was a purist who mistrusted perfect beauty, which brought an engaging tension to his fashion photographs as well as his still lifes and portraits. One of his best-known shots for Vogue magazine in the 1950s shows an impeccably dressed model glancing sideways through a veil that covers her face, as if she isn't ready for her close-up.
In another famous shot, this one from the 1990s, bright red lips drip with gooey chocolate. Suddenly, the dessert world's favorite food looks very unappealing.
Penn's most familiar photographs are the cosmetics ads he shot for Clinique that have appeared in magazines since 1968. Each image is a balancing act of face cream jars, astringent bottles and bars of soap that threatens to collapse.
Despite an obvious appreciation for the art and craft of a beautifully made dress, Penn strained against the unreachable world it represents. To escape it, or contest it perhaps, in the late 1960s he started photographing crushed cigarette butts and street debris.
Some reviewers found Penn's cigarette butts pretentious when they were displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975. Many questioned whether anything by a fashion photographer belonged in an art museum. A similar debate stewed during an exhibit of Penn's photos of urban debris at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1977.
Far-sighted reviewers, however, praised Penn's ability to turn discarded objects into art. "Each distinct, dirty, torn and ragged reject has been carefully selected, isolated, enlarged and transmuted from a cultural throwaway into a haunting iconic artifact," an Art News review concluded in 1977.
Penn stayed above the fray and photographed what he wanted. Hells Angels in leather and chrome and famouswriters received the same painstaking treatment.
"He didn't worry about questions of art versus commerce," said Colin Westerbeck, former photography curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. "Photography is a mass medium available to anyone. A few geniuses, like Irving Penn, redeem it," Westerbeck said in a 2003 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Besides his brother, Penn is survived by a son, Tom, and a stepdaughter, Mia Fonssagrives-Solow. Tribune staff contributed to this report.
chicagotribune.com
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