What happened with the H1N1 flu shots? The federal Conservatives claim, not surprisingly, that everything is right on track – in fact, we are a week ahead of schedule with H1N1 vaccine distribution. The federal Liberals are claiming, again, not surprisingly, that the government botched the whole thing. The provinces, not surprisingly, are blaming any problems on the federal government, and vice versa. And everyone is blaming the company that supplies the vaccine, and the people who are trying to jump to the front of the line for their flu shots.

All we know is that demand in the first week of H1N1 flu shots far outpaced supply right across the country. Health care workers, pregnant women, people with small children, and those with medical conditions lined up in the rain for hours, and some people were sent home without getting their flu shots. People not in the priority groups tried to sneak into the clinics. And a flurry of controversy exploded when it was learned a private for-profit clinic had a good supply of the vaccine.

The process of laying blame continues.

The real reason for the messy start to the H1N1 immunization program may well be government bungling, but it could be exactly the opposite, the phenomenal effectiveness of the government’s publicity campaign urging people to get the shots. The highly publicized death from H1N1 of a young hockey player just as the clinics were due to open created an urgency that must not be discounted. But perhaps it is simply that we are not quite so optimistic as we were a couple of years ago.

As a general rule, life has been very good to us in this part of the world. However, our confidence has been seriously shaken in the past year. It goes beyond the global economic situation, although that has certainly taken its toll locally. No one is denying the reality of climate change anymore, just as no one denies we are going to run out of oil and gas in the not-so-distant future.

We have watched too many warnings about all of these things and more go unheeded, and have suffered the consequences.

We have been told for years we are overdue for a deadly pandemic, and although we dodged the bullet with SARS, and have not seen avian flu make the anticipated jump to the general human population, we are probably less inclined to disregard the warnings than we once might have been. H1N1 could remain a relatively mild virus. Then again, so was the first wave of the Spanish flu of 1918. The second wave proved far deadlier, and eventually claimed millions of lives.

We may be lucky this time around, but we have a vaccine for H1N1. Many negative things over which we have no control have hit us in the past year – plant closures, a tornado or two, and periodic jumps in fuel prices. We have been brought to the brink of an unwanted federal election more than once. And our soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan. H1N1 is another negative hit, but it is one over which we have some control. For the price of a slightly sore arm, we need not “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and take our chances with this virus. We can defeat it. And so record numbers of us are rolling up our sleeves.

What a pity that there is no vaccine against the political rhetoric that surrounds the whole H1N1 flu clinic situation.