This is the story of your red right ankle

Because a factory in Britain screwed up, you won't be getting an inexpensive flu shot from the Student Health Center that will keep you from getting sick during finals. Neither will tens of thousands of high-risk patients like nursing home residents, children and cancer patients. If you needed any more proof that what goes on overseas actually affects us, there it is - one less needle stick this year, and a lot more miserable days in bed.

However, instead of just being a nuisance during the final weeks of "The Most Important Presidential Election of Our Lifetimes," the flu vaccine shortage reveals a lot about our misplaced priorities as Americans.

Authorities in Florida promised to prosecute a company that was selling the vaccine for a price that was well above the going rate before the shortage. Pharmacies and public health officials expressed outrage that anyone would be so inhuman and cruel to profit from people's misfortune. Personally, I don't see what was so wrong with the company making more dollars off a product that is both hard to find and for which the demand is high. Isn't that how economics works?

Isn't this why gas is hovering around $2 a gallon? Lower production in the Middle East, plus unrest in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and more people driving SUVs has contributed to crude oil breaking the $55-a-barrel price. Fuel prices like this make everything more expensive, from fruit at the grocery store to shipping your mom a birthday package via UPS. It's reasonable to be angry about having to donate a kidney to be able to afford gas. It's equally unforgivable that our government hasn't taken steps to ensure that another health crisis like the flu shot shortage never happens again.

After all, we have historically put tariffs on steel imports from overseas to protect American manufactures because having a domestic industry is critical to national security. Extreme fuel shortages are equally dangerous to our economic well-being, hence why the national reserves will be tapped if oil prices continue to wander higher. We've been told repeatedly that in this new post-9/11 world, terrorists are likely to exploit our weaknesses, especially when it comes to an epidemic like smallpox. Yet, we aren't even prepared for the flu. I don't feel any safer, and I think I know why.

Economics isn't the answer to all our problems, any more than simply killing every terrorist is. Violence and hatred breed more of the same, and trying to get cheaper gas without reducing our dependence and use of it will never work.

If we are to follow the law of supply and demand, which in America we've been implicitly taught is the new Golden Rule, all we get is $900 flu shots. This is just as wrong as gouging Florida residents for water and bread after a hurricane, and yet this is the environment in which most of our businesses operate.

You see, in this election I don't believe that simply casting a vote and doing one's civic duty will suffice. No matter which candidate is chosen, we each must choose if we will allow our nation to slide further down the slope of disinterested consumerism or if we will, like our grandparents, see ourselves as members of our communities.

It is time for us to cease being duplicitous in our rhetoric while supporting profit as the ultimate goal and acting offended when companies like Enron take this philosophy to its logical conclusion. No one in need should be forced to choose to pay the price of tuition to keep from catching the flu.