There isn't enough flu vaccine medicine to go around this year, but that might not matter, because the vaccine might not be effective against the "Fujian" flu that's going around.
Bad as they are, the difficulties in coping with this year's influenza epidemic are like the tiny tremors in California that remind you of the looming Big One. In the world of influenza, the Big One is a pandemic—a strain of influenza so different from what has circulated before that people have no immunity. That's what happened in 1918 when the flu killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide. Pandemics that killed well over half a million also struck in both 1957 and 1968.
Link(thanks, Scott!)
