Flu as an election issue?

Does anyone feel that the shortage of flu shots will be an election issue?

Check out an Eleanor Clift issue:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6256723/site/newsweek/

Old people waiting in lines and turned away will be awful images.

Iraq? What about our parents' and grandparents' safety?

(Why do they always have to wait outside? Why not in malls?)

They said on the phone that being there by ten a.m. should guarantee a flu shot. I have three chronic health conditions so I am supposed to get a flu shot every year. My doctor doesn't expect to get any vaccine this year, so I thought this could be my answer.

Remember they told us to be there by ten a.m. to be sure of getting one of the coveted doses.

Instead, some people lined up at 4:30 a.m., and they started giving shots at 7:30. Needless to say, the vaccine was long gone by the time I got there, even though it wasn't ten a.m. yet.

WTF?

Years ago, I only got in line at 6 a.m. to get Rolling Stones tickets -- and got good seats!

We are supposed to be in a war with terrorist who could us bio weapons and we cannot provide enough Flu vaccine for the public? That is a total and complete outrage.

Where in the hell are the so called Security Mom's? I think the Kerry campaign is missing a major issue.

From http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Flu%20Vaccine%20Death

"Calif. woman dies after wait for flu shot THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Friday, October 15, 2004 ·

LAFAYETTE, Calif. -- A 79-year-old woman who stood in line outside a supermarket for more than five hours waiting for a flu shot collapsed and later died....

In nearby Concord, police reported that two women, ages 76 and 83, were hospitalized Thursday after collapsing outside a store while waiting in a long line for the vaccine, possibly from heat exhaustion. Lafayette is located just east of Berkeley in northern California."

He could've landed a real blow on *, but he whiffed. All one has to do is look at the lines forming for flu shots. Look at all the moms who are mad their kids may not get shots. Remember a number of children died last year from the flu, Colorado for one. Yet Kerry let this big hanging curve go right by him without even a swing.

I was excited when the question was asked, and so disappointed when Kerry missed it.

I agree with Clift on this one.

Kerry won the Wednesday night face-off in Arizona on points rather than a knockout, argues the aide. He scored Kerry the winner on 15 questions compared to five for Bush. But given the edge Bush has as an incumbent to manipulate events (think Orange alert), this aide worries that Kerry missed a critical opportunity to set Bush back on his heels over the issue of the flu vaccine shortage.

It was the second question, and it went to Bush. Moderator Bob Schieffer asked the president how such a shortage could happen. The Democratic aide gave Bush a C-plus for his answer. Bush said the administration had been relying on one supplier in Britain. Bush is such a tough guy when it comes to national security that it’s ironic that he turned over a critical public-health need to another country. Moreover, British regulators say the administration knew weeks ago that there would be a vaccine shortfall. According to a report in The Washington Post, British health inspectors alerted their U.S. counterparts on Sept. 13 that there were unresolved contamination problems at the Liverpool plant of Chiron, which provides about half the U.S. supply of vaccine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has since denied that it got an early warning, but the American people should be asking questions about whether this information was withheld from them.

This is a major national crisis in the making. Thirty thousand people die from the flu in a normal year, and now thousands more could perish needlessly. Yet when it was Kerry’s turn in the debate to respond, he ignored the question and talked more broadly about health care. The Senate aide graded him lower than Bush: C-minus. Here’s what Kerry should have said: there are 50 million people in this country who need and want a flu shot and tens of thousands of them will get sick and some will die. How can we trust this president to keep us safe from a potential smallpox attack when we can’t trust him to protect us from the flu?

Might be a really good issue.