Have we dodged the H1N1 pandemic bullet?

Jon Surbeck, Weld County’s director of public health preparedness, recalls the anxiety and stress he felt faced with an oncoming flu pandemic and the dribbling number of doses of vaccine that started arriving last fall.

The pandemic of H1N1 influenza, otherwise known as swine flu, was erupting around the world, launched out of Mexico in April 2009. Pharmaceutical manufacturers were struggling to make the millions of doses of vaccine needed to cope with the outbreak, but production delays were hampering getting it to places like Northern Colorado.

Clinics were set up to vaccinate the most vulnerable first – pregnant women, children and…