Nate and I, along with 1600 of our neighbors, stood in line for up to three and a half hours (3 hours for us) in order to get a free H1N1 vaccination from our Minneapolis Public Health Department. It was amazing to see how well organized they were; they even had First Aid people, Behavioral Health People, folks circulating with bottles of water (greatly appreciated after standing for a couple of hours) and lots of ushers and liason folks. If I knew it was going to take that long I might have given up, but after being there for an hour and a half I felt I had a vested interest in remaining.
Now I just pray the virus doesn't mutate. The thing that impressed me with the need to get the shot was the appearance of ARDS (Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome) in which the lungs fill rapidly with fluid, sort of like a severe pneumonia, but worse. It has happened to young adults in perfect health, and it kills. There was a story on the news about a 19 year old college student who survived only because the hospital had a couple of special beds in the ICU that turns the patient to promote drainage of the lungs, allowing healing to occur while the comatose patient is on life support. This guy was in a coma for two weeks.
I went years without flu shots, then about 11 years ago I got The Real Thing. Highly educational: fevers up to 103.5 F, utter prostration, goddawful pain though out the whole bod. My boss, when I spoke to her to let her know I'd be coming back to work, said "Wow! You really WERE sick!" (grrr....) I'm just glad I don't have kids in school anymore. January will see a resurgence as kids bring whatever they picked up during vacation back to school, and then home with them. The early spate of cases over the summer at summer camp programs and suchlike were a fair warning shot: Get immunized if you can!
I had the seasonal flu shot about a month and a half ago, so now I'm as well covered as is possible.