Vandy breaks flu-shot world record, wildly sings “The Guinness is in us!”

January 12th, 2015

Well, perhaps that’s a bit overstated, but how often do you accomplish a feat worthy of recognition of the Guinness Book of World Records? There is only one Rolf Bucholz, for example, the world's most pierced man, who sports 453 punctures in his body. I think we can all be thankful for that. Vanderbilt University in Nashville was looking to puncture only one person at a time, and managed to do so in the form of flu shots to 12,850 students, faculty, staff and medical center employees in eight hours. (No truth to the rumor that Bucholz showed up and got back in line three times.) It’s official: Vandy has the new one-day world record for flu shots, breaking the mark by some pikers at Kaiser Permanente of 6,215 vaccinations in eight hours. Still, not to beckon drizzling clouds over this glorious parade, but do we really want to be setting world records for something involving syringes, needles and vaccines? I mean, the record for the most creative use of multidose vials and syringe reuse is already held by a certain endoscopy clinic in Las Vegas, which also holds the follow-up record for how many tens of thousands of people can be advised to be tested for hepatitis and HIV. May those marks never be broken. OK, we’ll cut Vanderbilt some slack since they did this in the context of running their emergency response vaccination plan, which would not be a drill should a deadly biologic or pandemic emerge. It didn’t hurt that they gave the record attempt a name fitting to market it to students and generally raise morale about a task many think must now be mandated: “Flulapalooza.”