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The long-awaited H1N1 vaccine for the so-called "swine flu" comes to Blanco County Friday at the Texas Department of State Health Services’ free shot clinic at the First United Methodist Church in Johnson City.

The clinic will be in the church Activity Building at Pecan and North Avenue E, across from the elementary school, from 11 am to 7 pm. No registration or appointment is needed and there is no charge for the shots.

Actually, some vaccine has been in the county already, available first through doctors for the most vulnerable segments of the population, then widening to more people as the supply expanded. The DSHS shot clinic also is intended to serve first those top-priority groups who suffer most from this strain of flu: pregnant women, youngsters from six months up to 24 years old, those who live with or care for infants less than six months old, and adults up to age 64 with high-risk medical conditions.

"This is the first chance we’ve had to reach large numbers of high-priority people at once," said DSHS epidemiologist Gene Mikeska, "so we’d like to get as many of them protected in this first clinic as we can."

The state plans to come back after the first of the year with another shot clinic in Blanco, Mikeska added. After each county has had a clinic, DSHS will return to counties where a second clinic is appropriate.

Delivery of the vaccine took so long because producing it is more like raising livestock than assembling cars...you can’t just put the parts together and have a vaccine...it has to be grown. If the virus is like a rabbit, it can grow quickly. If it’s more like a cow, gestation takes longer, and there’s no way to speed it up. This virus, unfortunately, was more like an elephant.

But it finally is here, still in time to protect people from

illness and perhaps save their lives, said Dr Thomas Frieden, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We don’t know what this disease is going to do next," Frieden explained, "but we do know hundreds of thousands more Americans are going to catch it, and some will die...even normally healthy adults."

The CDC estimates one American in six has had the H1N1 flu, most of them in October and November, and more than 10,000 have died of flu complications. The pandemic still is killing an American child every 10 hours. That’s better than the rate of one child every five hours at the peak of the fall wave, but still serious enough to make these free flu shots important for everyone.