corrente

They had a story on NBC nightly news yesterday featuring a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Vanderbilt University Hospital. In Nashville, Tennessee. She comes in contact with the sickest kids just this side of death, and she can't get a flu shot. This is her Senator:

(via NYT)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday that lawmakers on Capitol Hill who received flu shots in his office were either following federal guidelines or their own doctors' recommendations.

Frist was responding to criticism that his office was used as a makeshift clinic to administer shots to lawmakers two days after the federal government asked healthy adults to forgo the vaccinations because of a nationwide shortage.

``They keep mentioning my name as if I had done something exceptional, when I hadn't,'' Frist said after casting his ballot during early voting in Tennessee.

Frist, himself a physician, said he got his own inoculation before new federal guidelines were announced Oct. 5. Those guidelines urged healthy people to reserve remaining flu vaccine for older adults and young children who are most at risk for flu complications.

Frist also noted that one-third of Senate members are 65 or older, which is within the guidelines for receiving the vaccine.

Other lawmakers declined the shots to avoid the perception of preferential treatment, and legislation was introduced that would require Eisold to give any remaining vaccine to the Health and Human Services Department.

There's an old bit of doggerel about a disliked person named Dr. Fell, with which I have taken the following liberties:

I do not like thee, Doctor Frist
For reasons much too long to list
In '06 you're gone, and won't be missed
I do not like thee, Doctor Frist.