The waiver means far less than people are making of it. It didn't affect he methods used to produce the vaccine and it didn't change how much testing was done. The methods used in manufacture and testing are identical to the regular seasonal flu vaccines. In essence the flu vaccines have been standardized as a delivery system over the last twenty years with only the flu strains selected to go into it being changed.

The difference was primarily in the typical months of consensus building among various administrative structures which select which strains are going to go into next years flu vaccine. Selecting strains is serious business. Pick the wrong ones and you people can die in large numbers. Which is why the process normally takes many months of monitoring to see what is on the horizon and debate to try to get it right. With the H1N1 strain emerging at an odd time it didn't make it into the seasonal vaccine. The only real question was if it required a second vaccine to be released. Once that decision was made there was no debate over what would go into the vaccine so the process went much faster.

I think your premature in saying "pandemic like 1918 was going to sweep through and it just isn't happening". First the virus hasn't even really started 'sweeping through'. The height of the flu season is still weeks off. As temperature and humidity drop, and people are forced indoors, the 'sweeping through' gets easier. The numbers ultimately affected will only be clear after the fact.

Second, I hope it doesn't take people literally dropping dead in the streets to meet your expectations of a vaccine being worth the effort. Vaccines are part of preventing a worse case situation. If your relatively young and healthy the odds are the vaccine might only save you from a few days off work and in bed. But most people have friends, neighbors or family that have more on the line.

Already a few young healthy people, despite getting the full array of medical support, have died. Not being vaccinated isn't safer IMO than getting vaccinated.