Yeah, about that flu vaccine shortage...

Remember those lines of seniors, shivering in the cold and waiting hours to get their flu shots? Well now they can't give the stuff away:

State unable to sell flu vaccine bought from Europe

Back in October, John Kerry and the democrats, with the enthusiastic help of the media, tried to make the flu shot "crisis" into a liability for the Bush administration. After all, if seniors are waiting in line for hours and clinics are running out of flu shots well before they can meet demand, something must have gone terribly wrong!

It was obvious to me at the time that, despite the media's breathless coverage, there was no serious problem and that everyone who wanted a flu shot was going to get one--without having to get on the flu shot tour bus to Canada, even! This is exactly what has happened.

So why the shivering seniors getting in lines of a length more commonly seen at the Red Sox ticket office? Actually, it's much the same phenomenon.

Tickets to Red Sox games sell out, and unless the ownership builds a new stadium, or Major League Baseball decides to play in the snow, there's always going to be the same fixed quantity available, a quantity that's smaller than the (huge) demand. So obsessed fans (like me) line up at 6:00am in the bitter December cold and wait all day for a chance to buy some.

By endlessly hyping the temporary shortage of available shots, the media created the impression that at some point all the shots would be gone, and if you hadn't gotten one you were out of luck. It shouldn't be surprising then, that seniors, legitimately concerned at the risk to their health if they didn't get a flu shot, jumped on every clinic like the Fenway Faithful on Sox/Yankees tickets. I bet a substantial number of these seniors didn't usually get their flu shots in October, months before the flu season started, just like Sox fans didn't used to buy their tickets in December, months before opening day, when there was a lot less demand. But when you create the impression of a scarce resource, the demand gets bunched up at the beginning, and you get long lines at the ticket office or health clinic. When the media broadcasts pictures of these lines, the impression of a severe shortage is reinforced, exacerbating the problem further.

Of course, flu shots aren't like Red Sox tickets: when there's demand, supply can go up, and it did. By December (the usual start of the flu season), just about anyone who wanted to get a flu shot could have one.

The media and the democrats should be ashamed that they fanned the flames of this story and scared a lot of the elderly and infirm just to get some good footage and campaign material.