Wait your turn, Baby Boomers

I hate it when people cut in line.

That's the sense I get when I see long lines of people waiting to get H1N1 flu vaccines and some of those people in line are older folks.

They shouldn't be in line to begin with, at least not yet.

In an odd twist, the H1N1 is a flu that doesn't seem to affect older people as badly as it does younger people. During normal seasonal flu the older folks are right up there, as well they should, to get their vaccines.

But the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other health professionals are advising older people to make way for the folks who are most at risk for H1N1:

• Pregnant women,
• People who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age,
• Healthcare and emergency medical services personnel,
• Persons between the ages of 6 months and 24 years old.

According to the CDC, people ages of 25 through 64 years of age -- and that includes us Baby Boomers -- aren't a priority for the vaccine unless we are at higher risk because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems. That's something your doctor would advise you about.

Read the CDC's Q&A here.

It's women (specifically pregnant women) and children first, just as it was going for the life rafts on the Titanic.

I can't help but seethe when I watch television coverage of this H1N1 outbreak. I'm ticked off that the vaccine suppliers overpromised when the vaccine would be ready and how much of it would be available. It breaks my heart to hear that there isn't enough yet to go around and kids are becoming infected and some are dying.

And I really get ticked off when I see the reports and the long lines and the older man or woman who's being interviewed about how they couldn't get the H1N1 vaccine because they ran out.

"You shouldn't be in line to begin with!" I yell at the television.

I was heartened by one report that showed an older guy who had given up his spot in line to a pregnant woman. Great, I thought, but you still shouldn't have been in that line.

I talked to my doctor about my risk. Low, he said. Just follow good hygiene practices, he advised.

So I try to make an effort to cough and sneeze into my elbow. Those who know me know I sneeze a lot, so I'm getting well practiced at crooking my elbow to my mouth every time a sneeze comes on. I try to wash my hands frequently. I have hand sanitizing wipes and gels at the ready at home and at the gym where I work out most every day.

We can't be selfish about this. My nieces and nephews need the vaccines first. My daughter who's in health care in a large hospital needs the vaccines first.

I can wait. You can wait. We can get at the back of the line.

Amelia Earhart mystery is personal

Even after more than 70 years, the mystery of Amelia Earhart lingers.

The movie "Amelia," which debuts today with Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, will only add more conjecture to the mystery that has befuddled writers, scholars and researchers.

What happened to Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan in 1937 when their plane disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean as they attempted to be the first to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane?

It held the attention of my dad, Paul L. Briand Jr., for much of his adult life.

In 1960 he was one of the first, in a biography about Earhart entitled "Daughter of the Sky," to offer a conclusion based on his research: That she crash-landed off the island of Saipan and survived, but that she and Noonan were captured by the Japanese military stationed there in violation of a League of Nations agreement, and that they were shot as spies.

In the years since, other researchers and writers offered other ideas about Earhart's fate:

• That she was on a spy mission at the request of President Franklin Roosevelt;
• That she was captured but spent the war years in Japan as "Tokyo Rose"'
• That she ultimately returned to the United States and lived to old age as Irene Bolam;
• That she simply crashed into the expanse of ocean and disappeared.

No theory has been proven to be true.

High-tech has come into play in recent years, particularly in the form of the research vessels deployed by TIGHAR for its Earhart Project.

TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) has taken a scientific approach to its search for Earhart and believes, according to its web site, that "Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed, and eventually died, on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati. Archival research and nine expeditions have uncovered a compelling body of supporting evidence. Archaeological excavations during the next expedition, scheduled for May/June 2010, will aim to recover artifacts from which Earhart’s DNA can be extracted. The expedition will also include a deep water search off the atoll’s fringing reef for the wreckage of the airplane."

For my dad's part, he got the opportunity after he wrote the Earhart biography to view Navy documents on Earhart and he wrote a follow-up, "Requiem for Amelia," published here for the first time.

At the time of the original biography and until just after he wrote "Requiem," he was a U.S. Air Force officer, a scholar teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a researcher consumed by the passion of Earhart's life as a woman pilot.

His study of the Navy's official file was revealing. He wrote:

"Amelia Earhart was not on a spy mission for her government, she did not crash-land on Saipan; she was not taken as a prisoner; she was not executed as a spy or allowed to die. These are the conclusions of the Navy in the official report I was allowed to read. Considering their evidence, they could reach no other conclusions."

But he remained unconvinced, offering in "Requiem" his belief from information he received from corroborating witnesses on Saipan that she crash-landed there and died at the hands of the Japanese military, not because she was a spy, but because she was mistaken for one.

My dad pursued the Earhart mystery up until his death in 1986, never satisfied that he or anyone had found what he called "the truth."

Can the Hilary Swank-led epic of "Amelia" provide any answers, any flight path to the truth? No, it only deepens the mystery even more.

Prescription drugs show a depressing state of health

As a society, our blood pressure is too high and we're way too depressed.

We're also in a lot of pain and our cholesterol is too high.

That's the conclusion to draw from an AARP Bulletin listing of the 50 most prescribed drugs in America.

Of the 50, nine different medications are related to hypertension (high blood pressure). According to the list, more drugs are described for high blood pressure than for any other ailment.

Placing a close second behind hypertension medication is medicine to combat depression. Eight different medications among the top 50 are related to depression.

The AARP Bulletin article from October noted that 10 percent of the nation's health care costs are related to prescription drugs.

And the AARP notes that while brand-name drugs make up 22 percent of the Top 50, they represent 62 percent of the $53.2 billion in health care costs attributed to prescription drugs.

The highest ranking brand medication was Lipitor for high cholesterol. While it ranked seventh in total prescriptions written in 2008 it had the greatest retail cost -- $5.88 billion.

Of the top 50 medicines, the number of prescribed cholesterol medications (4) placed fifth behind medicines for bacterial infections (6) and pain (5).

The list serves as a window to see just what ailments we Americans are trying to combat with prescriptions drugs.

Yes, it's hypertension and depression, and bacterial infections, pain and high cholesterol. But it's also ulcers, allergies, hyperthyroidism, diabetes, insomnia, asthma, blood clotting, muscle injury, epilepsy and anxiety.

And this isn't just Baby Boomers or seniors we're talking about here. These are drugs prescribed for everyone, young and old.

When it comes to the sheer number of prescriptions, at the top was a pain medicine - Hydrocodone, which, according to the AARP figures, had 121.3 million prescriptions last year for a total retail cost of $1.78 billion.

That's a lot of pain, folks.

Lisinopril for hypertension was No. 2 - 69.8 million prescriptions and $686 million in retail costs.

Simvastatin for high cholesterol was No. 3 with 60.2 billion prescriptions at a retail cost of $1.45 billion. Lipitor had 49 million prescriptions.

Hmmm, and not one erectile dysfunction medication in the bunch.

A list like that raises more questions than it answers. Are we really as sick as the list might lead us to believe? Are doctors over-prescribing? Are patients, responding to the constant barrage of pharmaceutical advertising on television, demanding medicine that might be able to do without by adjusting their lifestyles a bit?

Our medicines tell us a lot about ourselves, and, unfortunately, the story it seems to be telling isn't a very good one.

Ready for winter?

I keep trying to convince myself that I'm ready for winter.

Everything around me -- chilly mornings, falling leaves and pine needles, turning on the heat -- should be reminder enough.

But I feel like I'm owed another month or two of nice weather before the harshness of winter settles in.

I haven't forgiven Mother Nature for the mediocre summer. Despite the equinox calendar, my summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And June was a washout. Probably half of July was a washout. August was terrific.

That means my three month summer was actually only about a month and a half. Someone owes me more summer.

Which is why I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around winter.

My wife Jane and I attempted to extend our summer with a nine-day trip to Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey in late September. We baked in the sun and heat at Camden Yards in Baltimore for an Orioles-Red Sox game. And we had warm enough weather to bask on the Delaware beaches and swim in the surf. And I had great weather for a couple of rounds of golf in Delaware and New Jersey.

But while that added a week to my summer, we returned home to the beginning throes of winter.

Baseball -- the sport of summer -- is winding down. (Let's go Red Sox!) The winter sports -- football, basketball and hockey -- are spooling up.

I've put my surfing gear away for the winter; I'm not a cold-weather surfer. The golf league I play in each Tuesday has wrapped up for the season; all we have left is an 18-hole tournament this weekend.

I'm thinking ahead to the likelihood of a good ski season. I'm hoping that the Farmer's Almanac is wrong with its forecast for an unseasonably cold winter with less snowfall than average. I'd rather have the snow over the cold. The family is planning our winter pilgrimage to the North Conway, N.H., area for our annual ski vacation during the school vacation week in February.

And the family is talking who will be where for Christmas.

The winter conversation is certainly there, so it's top of mind.

But as convincing as I try to be to myself that winter is coming, my brain is still many weeks from wrapping its head around what's ahead.

No left turn allowed

I've been known to make a right hand turn to go left.

I've always thought it's because of my impatience.

Now I can say it's because I'm eco-friendly, I'm green, I'm lessening my carbon footprint.

There are many places in my usual driving routes in my neighborhood where I hate to make left hand turns either because the light is way too long or because the traffic is way too heavy.

So I turn right, find a convenient place to pull a U-turn (sometimes legally) then merrily continue on my way.

This no left hand turn idea, I found, is all but institutionalized in the state of New Jersey.

My wife Jane and I spent a few days in the Monmouth area recently and I was surprised frankly in the many instances where I was forbidden in making a left hand turn, even along your average two-lane road.

For example, I needed to withdraw from cash from my bank that had an office near the hotel where we stayed. I was traveling north on the two-lane road but was prohibited from making a left hand turn into the bank's parking lot. I had to continue on, turn into a convenient parking lot to turn around and make the allowed right hand turn to the bank.

There are a lot of places in New Jersey where you have to turn right to go left by using turn out lanes from congested roads in commercial areas.

When gas prices started to get a little crazy, delivery companies such as FedEx started finding ways to get more mileage from a tank of gas. They made sure tires were filled to the proper pressure. They made sure engines were tuned up. And the logisticians determined that their companies could save more fuel if they didn't sit idling at traffic lights or waiting for traffic to make left hand turns.

As long as there's right on right, we're good for the environment.

It gives a whole new meaning to the thought that two wrongs don't make a right. Three lefts make a right.