Last year, scientists showed in a model that if you vaccinate about 60% of U.S. schoolchildren, flu deaths among the elderly would fall to 6,600 from the typical 34,000. "It's not necessarily true that the best way to protect someone is to vaccinate that person," says Ira Longini of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle. "In the case of the elderly, flu vaccine doesn't protect them very well, so breaking the chain of transmission provides greater protection."
There are lots of tricky ethical questions here, about who to vaccinate and why.
1 comment:
This is precisely the argument for psychotropic drug prescription to the mentally ill: others are not bothered by their behavioral alignments when they are given doses of medicine to keep them in line.
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