Who gets the flu vaccine first?

Some scientists are questioning whether the first people to get inoculated against the H1N1 flu should be the ones that are scheduled to.

The current formula calls for the people most likely to die to get the vaccine first. An article in Science Magazine, by way of Time.com, says it should, perhaps, be the people most likely to spread the illness.

“If you can stop transmission, you can protect the people who are vulnerable,” says Jan Medlock, a mathematician at Clemson University and one of the authors of the Science paper.

That would be kids and the age group of their parents — basically 20- and 30-somethings. Those are the people who, not coincidentally, have been the hardest-hit Minnesotans by the H1N1 outbreak so far.

The Minnesota plan for inoculation follows the federal guidelines: Health care workers, pregnant women, young children and people who care for infants under 6 months of age go first.