For the rest of the population, more vaccine will be available in mid-November at pharmacies, health care provider offices,  schools  and local health departments.

Whether you fall into the category of being a priority or not, the Virginia Department of  Health (VDH) website has a complete list of public vaccination sites, including pharmacies and local health departments.  At the top of this page, you can type in your city and postal code to narrow the search considerably.

There is also a page for  schools that will be hosting vaccination clinics.  If your child’s school is on this list, you are advised to check with the school for vaccination schedules. Phone numbers are listed on the page.

Local health departments and phone numbers are available as well. Simply type in a Health District OR a Location OR a Zip Code OR the City you would like to locate, in the box at the top of the page to bring up results relevant to you and your family.

The VDH  website has a swine flu hotline, as well.  Contact them at 877-ASK-VDH3 (877-275-8343.)

For the seasonal flu, a  link on the Flu.gov web page for Virginia, takes you to the American Lung Association website where you are asked to enter your zip code into the Flu Clinic Locator on the right-hand side of the page. This will give you the date, times, address, and phone number of the clinics offering seasonal flu shots near you, as well as a map showing where the clinic is located. The flu clinic locator is updated daily, so you will always get the most up-to-date  information.

Both kinds of  vaccines are made the same way. The virus is injected into chicken eggs and grown into larger quantities. If you have a known allergy to chicken eggs or a compromised immune system due to some other medical condition, talk to your doctor about whether flu vaccination is even an option for you.

For the vaccine that is administered by needle, the virus is harvested from the eggs, killed and chopped into segments. When it is injected into you, it activates your body’s immune system to produce the antibodies that will kill the actual flu virus should you become exposed to it.

When making the nasal-spray vaccine, the virus is grown in the eggs at lower temperatures, which weakens it so that it can only survive in the nose. The nasal vaccine infects the mucosal cells that are closely monitored by your immune system and once this system detects the vaccine, it produces permanent immunity to the flu virus.

Only healthy people ages 2 to 49 and who aren’t pregnant can receive the nasal-spray vaccine. If you fall into this category and cringe at the thought of having to get a  needle, the nasal spray might be the way to go. However, if you are getting both the seasonal and the swine flu shots, you will need to wait four weeks in between the two nasal-spray vaccines.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), you can’t get the flu from either the injectable vaccine  or the nasal-spray, because the viruses have been inactivated. With the flu shot, minor side effects can occur, including soreness, redness or swelling where the shot is given, low grade fever, aches and nausea. These problems could occur soon after the shot is given and last from 1 to 2 days.

The nasal spray can cause the following side effects in children:

• runny nose
• wheezing
• headache
• vomiting
• muscle aches
• fever

In adults, side effects, if they occur include:

• runny nose
• headache
• sore throat
• cough

There can be serious side effects from either vaccine but these are very rare. One such side effect is Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a rare disorder in which the person’s own immune system damages nerve cells. Visit the CDC website for questions and answers about this condition.

The Flu.gov website has links to Q & A’s about both the H1N1 nasal spray and the needle that answers questions about what symptons to look for in the event of any kind of severe reaction and how to proceed.

Experts argue that the swine flu vaccine is actually the result of a 60-year-old tried-and-true process of making  flu vaccine  that was tested on thousands of people, including some volunteer researchers, before being scheduled for distribution.

The first testing of both the arm-shot and nasal-spray vaccines was performed on 3,000 volunteers in eight laboratories at Baylor University, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Emory University, Seattle Group Heath Cooperative, St. Louis University, University of Iowa, University of Maryland and Vanderbilt University.

It’s also being tested by the five firms licensed to make up to 250 million doses of the vaccine by next spring for the U.S. market. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt, was one of the volunteers and says that the vaccine is tested for safety and to see if it produces the level of anti-body production in the blood that reaches FDA standards.

Kenneth Alexander, an infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago, says there is no reason to believe this flu vaccine will be any less safe than the seasonal flu shots because the only difference between the two is the virus it’s made from.

The FDA’s acting deputy commissioner for public health, Jesse Goodman, says that there’s a lot of misinformation being spread around and added that it’s important to have all the facts before making up your mind about whether or not to get the vaccine.

The Tribune article goes on to detail how the vaccine is made:

Last April, when the H1N1 virus was first identified by federal health officials in Mexico and California, they sent it to the pharmaceutical companies  they contract so that each of them could formulate their version of the vaccine for field testing before mass production. That process took a month.

The only FDA-approved method for making flu vaccines dates back to the 1940′s.  This involves injecting the virus into chicken eggs to be grown into larger quantities. Like many everyday foods and medicines, the ingredients contain a number of vital chemical substances that could be toxic in large doses but are included in the vaccine in harmless, trace amounts.

For instance, the active ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid which, taken in proper doses, is effective in reducing fever and relieving headaches. However, if aspirin where to be swallowed in large doses, there would be serious consequences.

A preservative added in trace amounts, thirmerosal, which contains ethyl mercury, is the ingredient that anti-vaccine activists question the most. Critics allege that it can cause autism and other neurological disorders but researches insist that it is present in such a small amount that it poses no harm. Still, single-shot doses can be ordered without thimerosal and there is none of this ingredient in the nasal spray. The U.S. does not add “adjuvants,” another compound raising concerns and sometimes added to vaccines to stimulate the immune response in recipients.

Swine flu is quite another story. This is a particularly nasty virus that can be fatal and it’s recommended that every last one of us get a shot in the arm against it, especially the over 65 crowd, children, pregnant women and those with health concerns such as diabetes, asthma, cancer, HIV/Aids, heart or kidney disease. That means some of us will have to endure two needles.

The next step is finding out where and when to go to get these shots. Government health-related web sites are good places to start. In the U.S. go to Flu.gov. There’s a map at the top of the page. Simply click on your state and it will take you to a page with a heading near the top of the page that says “Flu shot locat0r.” Click the appropriate button and get a listing flu shot locations and the dates they will be in operation. Looks to me like all of the states have the same page set up.

In Canada, go to the Public Health Agency of Canada website and you will find a similar map about half way down the page. Click on your Province or Territory to arrive at a page with flu information from your Provincial or Territorial Government. Look for a button to click that will take you to clinic schedules. For example, Ontario’s page has a button to click on near the bottom left-hand side of the page that says “Important information about scheduling your flu shots this year.” That will take you to the clinic information. For B.C. a box near the top right-hand side of the page says “Find your local flu clinic.”

So, I guess in Canada each of the Provinces and Territories were told to come up with their own pages. That makes it harder to tell you where to look, but the information is there.

Both Flu.gov and the Public Health Agency of Canada have a ton of information about the flu, including how to protect yourself and others, frequently asked questions about the H1N1 vaccine and knowing the difference between the seasonal flu and Swine flu.