Here’s a couple of medical-related things that have bothered me in the last few days:
###The Flu Shot Cupboard is Bare
Despite last winter’s much lamented Flu Vaccine shortage and all its associated hand wringing about solutions for the future, I cannot find a flu shot this season. I go late in the day to Tuft’s flu shot clinic for students, and they’ve run out. I make an appointment for a flu shot with my real doctor and then a few days later get a call cancelling my appointment because they’re all out. No one seems to know when they’ll get more either. Where is the media outrage? Apparently the only way to get a flu shot this year is to work for a large company that makes machines for business across national borders and go to one of their under populated, over vaccine-supplied clinics.
Or line up early and often as if to buy bread in Moscow in the 1980s. Terrific!
###Having to Show Id to Buy Sudafed
I was at Target on Saturday, and as I was feeling a little under the weather (perhaps its the flu I can’t get vaccinated against) I decide to pick up some Target brand 12-hour Sudafed. Only thing is now you have to take a card with a picture of the item to the pharmacy, where they will not only id you to make sure you’re old enough to buy Sudafed, but also record the information in some database and make one sign some extra slip of paper. Sounds like a feel-good, zero-effectiveness way to win the war on meth-labs in Somerville. Are there even any? Then I guess its working. Did we have a problem to begin with?
If I buy a bunch of sudafed and a keg in the same day, which have equally onerous purchase registration requirements around here, I wonder which would generate a police visit first?
Sure, switch to the new Sudafed PE “eqivalent”- only there doesn’t seem to be a generic equivalent yet, so I’d be paying more to avoid the inconvenience of getting the old stuff.
All of that, and I bet people who run meth labs are still having no problem getting a hold of their Pseudoephedrine.
I like that when I went to buy CVS-brand Sudafed this past weekend, if I wanted to buy the 24-count box, I had to bring up a little card to the register in order to physically obtain the meds, but if I wanted say, the 18-count, or even the jumbo, super-sized 84-count, don’t worry. Those amounts I could just pick up myself, off the shelf (and stick in my coat pocket and run out the door, if I was the shop-lifting, contraband type). The “danger-danger” 24-count amount must be what the kids are using for their meth labs…
I’m just waiting for Ephedra to get legalized again so I can weigh 80 lbs, sweat alot, and get angry for no reason. But shit, yo, I could run like the wind.. and run forever…