纽约时报 weighs in on the flu shot shortage in its lead editorial this morning (“An Influenza Vaccine Debacle“). It is the most shallow editorial I’ve read in months. After devoting several paragraphs to the FDA’s failure to prevent contamination at Chiron’s Liverpool plant, the editorial finally gets to the root problem:

Underlying this crisis is the increasing fragility of the vaccine manufacturing base. This may be mostly an American problem rather than a global problem. There are six major manufacturers in the world who produced some 200 million doses for other nations this year, but only two of them are licensed to produce the 100 million doses of injectable vaccine for this country. The British coped with the loss of Chiron’s vaccine far better than the United States, mostly because they order far less vaccine and have a diversity of suppliers that can fill in if one company falters.

Okay, fine. So why aren’t more manufacturers selling to the U.S. market?

Experts are pondering ways to induce more companies to make flu vaccine for the American market. The issue is not that manufacturers are worried about lawsuits over liability, as President Bush has suggested. Litigation is seldom, if ever, cited in authoritative analyses of vaccine shortages.

Fine, lawsuits probably aren’t the major factor. (But see 此处 for a dissenting view.) So what is?

The main problem is that influenza vaccine needs to be reformulated every year, and companies suffer huge losses if they overestimate the amount that will be needed because they end up having to destroy millions of doses.

Now just a second. The 时 just got through telling us that Britain has plenty of suppliers. Why, if the main problem is the need to reformulate the vaccine, does Britain have many suppliers when the U.S. has few? Don’t suppliers that sell to Britain have to reformulate their vaccines too? Unfortunately, this key question is not even addressed, let alone answered by the 时报 editorial writer.

The administration needs to find a way to expand and stabilize the vaccine manufacturing base. The lesson of the Chiron debacle is that a diversity of supply is critical.

Of course that is the lesson. Duh. But the 时 editorial writers do not suggest anything–not one thing–that would increase diversity of supply. Nor do they identify one cause of the underlying problem. (All they said is that the lack of suppliers is not caused by trial lawyers and that manufacturing the vaccine is tricky because it needs to be reformulated every year.)

比较 时报 non-analysis with that of 凯文·德拉姆（Kevin Drum）. I don’t agree with Drum (he pooh-poohs the role of deep discounts extracted by the CDC via bulk purchase agreements), but his analysis is thoughtful, informed, and interesting. The 时 editorial, by contrast, looks as though it was slapped together in about 5 minutes by someone with virtually no knowledge about America’s vaccine supply problem.

No wonder even 自由派 have begun to notice that the 时‘ editorials read as if they “were written in crayon.”

More on the flu shot shortage:

–Excellent Rush Limbaugh commentary

–Is the CDC exaggerating the benefits of the flu shot? （10 年 20 月更新）

–The flu shot question

–Something to think about when you get the flu this winter

– good insights from George Gaskell