So by this point it can said that most people in the U.S. know about the H1N1 virus at least. I am not saying that the entire population knows of the symptoms, the origin, or the case rate, but I'm saying that people are now aware of it's existence. And unless your a lucky person who is living in Wyoming, Montana, or North/South Dakoto (areas that predictions have shown will have the lowest amount of cases), then it would probably be a good idea to have information at your side about it.
Everywhere I walk on campus I see signs, posters, cards, all stating reasons to wash hands, get flu vaccines, etc. I think I may count how many I see in a given day just to prove how much attention this campus is giving about being sick. UNE is largely based on medicinal sciences, which may be a contributing factor to this onslaught of health information, but I learned to wash my hands back before preschool, I don't think I need to be reminded every time I walk by a wall of a building on campus. Actually I just had a thought, instead of having 1000 papers hung up around campus about health/campus events, we should start hanging up other things, maybe news articles or artwork (that could be attention grabbing and also entertaining).
Now don't get me wrong, I am all for living a healthier life, especially in the way the world is going today and the many breakthroughs that have occured in the past decade, and the new information that has been gathered. Yet I like to see a variety of things, I like to take in a lot of things at once and have different opinions. For example, this week UNE had their first H1N1 vaccine clinic, something I pondered about attending. The day was glorious, we had a helicopter land on Alfond Lawn, to bring support the military health assistance and also to health care nation wide.
    The people that arrived in the helicopter were friendly, answered questions, and even allowed students and faculty to sit inside the helicopter and see how it works (without it taking off of course). It was a great publicity stunt, attracting quite a few students. I wasn't there when it landed (was sleeping) but I did make it around an hour or so before it was going to take off again. Ok now back to my point. On the same day the helicopter landed, we had our clinic for vaccines.   As you can see from the first picture of the clinic, it was only available to UNE students under the age of 24, and pregnant women. I did contemplate getting a vaccine, but in the end I chose not to (even though they were free). I do not think we are at the point of necessity for them yet. Also, the vaccines were rushed to be created over the summer and fall through pressure from the public to the government and to health care officials. This rush could create problems in the future, through uncomplete vaccines, future unknown side effects, etc. Not only that but I know what people are picturing, everyone is picturing a nation/globe wide pandemic, where a huge percent of the population is going to get sick. Well that is a possibility and it could very well happen (it's happened numerous times throughout human history folks). But what isn't often said about these vaccines is that they are made for the H1N1 virus as it stands now. Viruses like this have the possibility to mutate, and change, causing the current vaccine to be obsolete. This vaccine is just another short term fix, the only thing it's going to prevent is the spread of the current virus, but by the time it does reach a full fledged pandemic I am sure it would have already mutated, making the current vaccines useless. Money should be going into the progression of other medicinal sciences, bioengineering, stem cell research, gene therapy, etc. The power of media pressure and political influence is straining what we should be looking towards and for. To be sadly honest I don't know one student who said they went and got their H1N1 vaccine on Tuesday (theres another clinic coming up next week), and I'm sure some students did go. Yet it does say a lot if we have 100's of health/flu posters hanging around campus and turnout for the vaccine didn't deplete available vaccinations right away.
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