70 million vaccines ready to go to waste
by Marjorie Mapanao in Diseases on Dec 01, 2010
About $260 million worth of swine flu vaccines are about to be disposed. Out of the total that the US produced, 40 million doses have expired. The superannuated vaccines will be burned, setting a new record for leftover vaccine disposal in America.
If the remaining 30 million doses expected to expire are added to the current number of disposed ones, over 43% of the vaccines produced would have amounted to a waste.
Since this issue suggests an over-budgeting by Federal officials, in their defense, they claim that it was a necessary chance to take for a new unpredictable virus. The expectations were that the virus would eventually become a pandemic. In reality, the seasonal flu had a higher mortality rate than swine flu.
Dr. Ulrich Keil of the prestigious University of Muenster in Germany notes that experts have continued to make false predictions concerning the behavior of new viruses. The proposed worldwide epidemic never fully manifested, and more people died from cancer, stroke, heart disease and diabetes annually.
The government believes that the high demand for the swine flu vaccine last year was only due to fear. Dr. John Treanor, from the University of Rochester Medical Center assures that this is a common problem. There will always be unused doses.
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