Yeah, I called every pharmacy in SE Portland this past weekend, and exactly one of them claimed to have the vaccine, but couldn't actually schedule me for a shot until sometime this week. The rest speculated that they would get restocked sometime this week, though.

@guspacho: actually, it's not quite that simple. The vaccine is more effective in people with stronger immune systems. So if you vaccinate younger people, there will be fewer cases of flu in existence than if you vaccinate older or weaker people. Which means there's less chance of the old or weak catching flu in the first place, so they're safer in the event that the vaccine isn't effective on them.

There's a balance to be had, and it's a very complicated issue deciding the best strategy for distributing the vaccine when it's a scarce resource. In this case, it's not actually that scarce; the local pharmacies might be running out but there's lots more manufactured already and on the way. So it's probably best if anyone who can tries to get one.

(oh, and to those of you who think having flu is no big deal: you've probably never had real flu. If you're in bed less than three days, you haven't got flu.)