Thursday, November 5, 2009

Image and message issues continue to deteriorate when it was announced today that workers from Goldman Sachs, Citibank and other Wall Street firms had gotten H1N1 vaccine as pregnant women wait in line. The CDC is being blamed since they are responsible ultimately for distribution. In fact, CDC takes orders from States and locals and then distributes the vaccines through a contract with McKesson Corp, which sends to over 150,000 distribution sites within the states according to how the cities and states decide to distribute based on their best judgment. Since the Wall Street firms have large clinics, they can easily distribute vaccine to their pregnant employees and those with underlying conditions. It was Mayor Bloomberg’s choice, but the image did not look good and the CDC took flak for it. Still getting massive (couple of times daily) media exposure. Media interest paused for a few days due to the terrible tragedy at Fort Hood (Texas) army base where a crazed Army MD psychiatrist who trained at USUHS and Walter Reed and is a Muslim (born in USA) went on a shooting rampage and killed 13 and wounded 30 soldiers getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan. Am extremely busy and very fatigued!