Critic says Ottawa should have stopped producing that vaccine to concentrate on H1N1
A persistent critic of the way federal health authorities have handled the H1N1 pandemic says the biggest mistake was keeping on producing vaccine for the ordinary seasonal flu, even after it was a good bet swine flu would be this fall’s big problem. Dr. Richard Schabas, Ontario’s former chief medical officer of health, argues a “courageous decision to follow the evidence” would have cancelled normal flu shot production and delivered enough H1N1 vaccine several weeks early. But other experts say it wasn’t obvious the regular flu would all but vanish, as it has, as H1N1 came back hard this autumn. So the debate, and the blame game, continues.