Getting two doses of vaccine seems complicated. How will it work?
It is more complicated, because it means two trips to the vaccination clinic. So you would get your first as early as mid-October, assuming the vaccine clinical trials don’t raise any red flags before then. After that initial dose, you would have to wait three weeks to get your second dose. It would then take another two weeks or so for your body to mount a full immune response to the virus. So Thanksgiving is probably the earliest anyone would be fully protected from the new strain of H1N1 flu. Are public health officials worried about people not getting that second dose of vaccine? Yes they are (again, assuming that clinical trials show that two doses are necessary). They say it’s very possible that most people will have zero protection from the virus if they only get one dose of the vaccine. This is based on studies they’ve done on seasonal influenza vaccines in young children. The very first time any child under age 9 gets a flu vaccination, they need to get two doses to develop im
