Saturday, February 19, 2011

K-Mart lowers price of flu shot, joins the club of vaccine "pushers" despite slow flu season

Kmart, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD) announced that they have lowered the price of the seasonal influenza vaccine to $ 15.

They join a host of other outlets, including Walmart (NYSE:WMT), Rite Aid (NYSE:RAD), CVS (NYSE:CVS), and Walgreens (NYSE:WAG) in aggressively "pushing" the flu shot this year, despite the low incidence of flu outbreaks this year.

K-Mart shamelessly cites the CDC's flaky "misconceptions" web site (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/misconceptions.htm) in saying that the influenza disease can "occur as late as May" in urging people to get the shot. However, we are under no misconceptions about the real reason for the flu shot promotion: with no swine flu hysteria this year, sales of flu shots are lagging, hurting the bottom line.

K-Mart Press Release
http://www.searsholdings.com/pubrel/kmart/02182011.pdf

#flu #swineflu

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