swine flu

Personally, I would definitely not get the swine flu vaccine right now. It really is not that different from the regular seasonal flu; this flu just seems a lot more severe due to vast media coverage. According to the CDC, there's a low mortality rate for the swine flu, and only people who are pregnant or have other chronic illnesses are at an increased risk of complications from the flu. In addition, the New England Journal of Medicine just published several studies from the clinical trials of experimental swine flu vaccine that said almost half of the people who were given the vaccine had some form of side effects while others didn't really respond to the vaccine. After reading all this and discussing it in my recitation groups, I'm a little skeptical on this vaccine. When my recitation class voted on whether he/she should get the shot, the majority of the people said no and I agree.
As for who should get the shot first, we, as a class, decided that the most logical yet risky way is by giving it to people most likely to spread it. It's the most reasonable one in that this method benefits the society as a whole more and can protect as many people as possible. For example, we can give it to the caregivers, the children, and people living in dense population areas. However, this plan is rather risky becuase it's an indirect form to protect people from getting swine flu. For example, when giving it to people most at risk (direct method), the media can say that an X number of people was saved today by the swine flu vaccine. In contrast, the media can't say how many people will actually be saved from the swine flu using the indirect method becuase there's no way to know. Also, if the vaccine didn't work or if the flu virus mutates, then there could be a mass epidemic, and the plan would fail.
I'm not exactly sure what biomedical technologies would help with the swine flu pandemic. But if there was a way to biologically tag the virus to know what it mutates to when it does, then perhaps the vaccine that's made would be more efficient. Also, since the virus spreads through contact with other people, sneezing or coughing, maybe scientists could develop a method to keep the air in a really populated building such as school difficult for the virus to survive so the flu won't be as easily transmitted. For example, a technology known as AiroCide developed by Nasa has helped prevent transmission of infections in hospitals. I guess more general technologies for managing the swine flu at Penn are maybe installing more hand sanitizers in classrooms/labs and buildings. Another way could be to install heat sensors at building entrances so that if a student was really sick, then the sensor could detect his/her body temperature and inform the student health service.