Borrow Swine-flu Vaccine from your friends

The Swine Flu Disease is a nice learning environment for the president’s engagement in the health arena. Producers have managed to get commitments from governments in the whole world to buy large quantities of vaccine even before the vaccine was develeoped and before the threat to the population was quantified.  However, the vaccine manufacturers did not want to build “one time” manufacturing facilities to really meet the demand. GlaxoSmithKline e.g. plans to sell a vaccine containing an unlicensed additive which allows them to produce four times more flu shots than with the pure vaccine. The only problem – the product was not tested according to established rules. This caused a big uproar in Germany when it became known that members of the government and the army should receive the “real stuff” – a traditional vaccine without the additive.

In contrast to US, Germany has enough vaccine with additive because government was guaranteeing the order and paid about 3 times more than e.g. US government. Guess why GlaxoSmithKline is not shipping enough vaccine to US?  However, there is a rather simple way out. Germany has contracts for more vaccine than actually needed because a large part of the population thinks that the vaccination is more dangerous than the flu itself. The vaccine must be used immediately and cannot be stored. President Obama should give the chancellor of Germany (just reelected Angela Merkel)a call  and ask for a couple of millions of swine flu shots. Certainly he will get a good “second hand” price because Germany really can’t use what they payed for the vaccine.  Thus president Obama’s strategy not to overreact to the flu threat may pay pay off.