represented a quicker turnaround than the release of the first doses of the 1957 vaccine, which took three months after its production strain became available. At this time, the flu was spreading fast around the country. There was much interest within the press and among public figures in the vaccine. On 18 November, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association announced that 17.5 million doses would be available for civilian use but said that "substantial quantities" would only come after the New Year. By the end of the year, over 10 million doses had been released. At this point, influenza was widespread in the country. Notably, the crew of Apollo 8 received the vaccine on 3 December prior to their mission later in the month. President Johnson received "two types" of vaccine prior to his bout of flu in December, but it is not clear if one of these was the pandemic vaccine. Johnson, 60 at the time, was in poor health and had been hospitalized several times during his presidency. He thus would have been prioritized for vaccine given the CDC recommendations, even outside of being the president. Lots of vaccine continued to be released throughout January 1969, with nearly 21 million doses available by the end of the month. By this point, however, influenza activity and subsequent mortality had already peaked. Demand for the vaccine diminished and a considerable surplus remained. Given the time it took to build up antibodies, it is unlikely a significant number of people were effectively immunized to alter the course of the epidemic. Hilleman himself would later acknowledge that the vaccine was "too little and too late" for most of the country. However, it was estimated that a "considerably higher" proportion of the recommended priority group of older and chronically ill persons received the pandemic vaccine than in 1957. Nevertheless, even after the debacle that was the vaccination effort in 1957, US health officials by 1968 still had "no meaningful information regarding [influenza vaccine's] actual distribution", such as "to what extent it actually reaches persons at highest risk." Following the epidemic in the US, leftover vaccine was made available for the southern hemisphere and parts of Europe where the main outbreak had not yet happened. The Japanese strain of the new variant was incorporated into the bivalent vaccines recommended for the 1969–1970 flu season in the US. Outside the US, vaccination efforts were undertaken in many