The H1N1 pandemic is the first in 40 years.

Up until now, this administration has been getting very favorable reviews from public health experts for their handling of this pandemic. No less than the president of the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the independent National Academy of Sciences, says that the administration has made “no excessive promises.” He is quoted below in the excerpt of The Washington Post story about this.

That said, there is an important question to be answered about why the H1N1 vaccine is being shipped in much smaller quantities than promised. True, the use of eggs makes the process a little unpredictable—but not this unpredictable. This is an old, tested technology. Vaccine-makers know how to use it. That uncertainty tied to the use of eggs should have been built in to estimates and delivery dates.  Clearly, it was not.

The administration says it was not kept fully informed by manufacturers.

The pharmaceutical companies say that they did tell them on their weekly calls.

(In an earlier story this week, the administration explained that there are very few vaccine plants in the world, none in the U. S. The administration plans to add one next year, the story said.)

Call records can be checked. E-mails or other paper trails should be checked. The president should be getting to the bottom of who actually knew what and when.

Common sense, however, tells us that  it will be the administration which takes the heat for over-promising vaccine.Pharmaceutical companies do not answer to angry legislators and voters.

The administration has everything to lose with too-rosy scenarios. The pharmaceutical companies are in control: They and they alone can produce the vaccine.  They win, regardless.

Therefore, who said what to whom matters a  lot. Somebody’s numbers are wildly off the mark.

The vaccine has been “the” solution for this pandemic. Failure to get it on time and in sufficient quantities is a blow to the strategy of the CDC and the World Health Organization for containing the pandemic and preventing complications and deaths.

Whose numbers were wrong?

The Washington Post

…”Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in television interviews Monday that officials had been “relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers, and as soon as we got numbers we put them out to the public. It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy.”

“Her deputy, Nicole Lurie, said in a separate interview with The Washington Post that when the companies “hit some stumbling blocks, they sometimes thought the fix was around the corner and didn’t always feel the need to tell us, and then sometimes it turned out the fix wasn’t around the corner.”

” Representatives of the companies said they kept the government informed along the way about challenges, including a slower-than-expected growth of the vaccine inside chicken eggs.

“We have a formal call with them once a week and are in touch with them probably on a daily basis,” said Donna Cary, the top spokesperson for Sanofi Pasteur of Lyon, France. “We’re pretty much right on track.”

“The administration’s response has generally received high marks from public health experts and medical observers. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, said: “I think they’ve been fairly candid. They’ve always qualified their statements and made no excessive promises.”