America’s Flu-Shot Problem Is Also Its Next COVID-Shot Problem
About 18 years ago, while delivering a talk at a CDC conference, Gregory Poland punked 2,000 of his fellow scientists. Ten minutes into his lecture, a member of the audience, under Poland’s instruction, raced up to the podium with a slip of paper. Poland skimmed the note and looked up, stony-faced. “Colleagues, I am unsure of what to say,” he said. “We have just been notified of a virus that’s been detected in the U.S. that will take somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 lives this year.” The room erupted in a horrified, cinematic gasp. Poland paused, then leaned into the mic. “The name of the virus,” he declared, “is influenza.”
Call it funny, call it mean, but at least call it true. Poland, a physician and vaccinologist at Mayo Clinic, had done little more than recast two facts his colleagues already knew: Flu is highly contagious and highly dangerous, a staggering burden on public health; and for years and years and years, Americans, even those trained in disease control and prevention, have almost entirely ceased to care. Vaccines capable of curbing flu’s annual toll have existed since the 1940s. Close to a century later, some 50 to 60 percent of Americans adults still do not bother with. The crux of the uptake shortfall “is this ,” Poland told me. He predicts this pattern will play on repeat, and at higher volume, with SARS-CoV-2—another devastating respiratory virus that’s to .
