Yes, prisoners should get the H1N1 vaccine.

So, the angry mob is wielding pick axes, scythes, and keyboards over the decision to give prison inmates the H1N1 vaccine before other populations get it. Some are even saying that prison inmates should not get health care at all.

Once again, the masses prove that they can’t see past their own existence. Never mind the debate about who is worthy of a vaccine Never mind that confinement is a particularly effective way of spreading a virus among a population.

These myopic people are forgetting about corrections officers and their families. It’s bad enough that COs have to put up with inmates throwing feces and other bodily fluids at them. They don’t need to deal with H1N1 on top of it. They also don’t need to bring it home to their families, who may then carry it to work, school, restaurants, malls, public transportation, and so on.

It’s not even as simple as vaccinating the corrections officers. For one thing, H1N1 spreads through particle droplet infection, just like any other flu. Carriers sneeze or cough and it gets into the air. That means it gets onto clothes and skin. If you touch an infected surface and then touch your eyes or rub your face, you can get it. What’s more, it’s possible to walk around infected, and therefore able to spread the virus, for two weeks before you have symptoms. Newly convicted inmates who appear to be healthy upon entering a jail or prison could introduce the virus to the population, and if the other inmates are vulnerable (and many of them are because their immune systems have been compromised from years of drug use or from AIDS), it will spread like wildfire. All of that sneezing. All of that coughing. All of those virus germs landing on corrections officers who then leave the prison at the end of their shifts and carry it back out into the world — you know, where all of these outraged people live.

The masses are complaining that their tax dollars will be “wasted” on vaccinating prison inmates. Corrections officers are civil servants. That means their salaries are funded through tax dollars. I might add that they are unionized, which means good benefits and plenty of paid sick days. After several years of service, they start making a nice piece of change. As well they should, too, because they work in conditions that I’d wager most of the people screeching about the vaccine would not be able to tolerate — and that includes exposure to every cold, flu, and heaven-knows-what that goes around. If the huffing and puffing hordes are worried about getting the most out of their tax dollars, they would consider vaccinating prison inmates to be a form of protecting their investment in corrections.

Unfortunately, it seems that like the flu, short-sightedness is contagious.