H1N1

I don't criticise the French Government for ordering too many vaccines against the H1N1 virus. Apart from anything else, they were originally told by the UN that two shots of the vaccine (and not one) would be required. Secondly, neither they nor anyone else could have known that the virus would turn out to be less virulent than initially feared. We have to remember, too, that a whole generation of French politicians has been traumatised by the "contaminated blood" catastrophe of the early 1980s which provoked a major political scandal as well as a terrible human tragedy. It is a safe bet that the very people who are attacking the Government most violently for its mishandling of the situation now would have been the first to berate it had taken a more "relaxed" stance and things had taken a turn for the worse.

My criticism is on a different point which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been raised elsewhere. Assuming for the moment that the epidemic, as we are told, constituted (constitutes) a danger of the first magnitude, and leaving aside the question of the surplus of vaccines, why has the vaccination campaign itself been conducted at such a leisurely pace? The least one can say is that there has been little sense of urgency.