Medical folks - regarding vaccines

[missouridawg]

I’m an engineer, so the medical word confuses the hell out of me.

How do we execute a new/different flu vaccine every year, but a COVID-19 vaccine can’t even start trials for months? Is it because of our history/knowledge with the flu? And our lack of knowledge on COVID-19? Seems like we wouldn’t know what strain of flu is going around until October or so. But I always get my flu shot in Oct/Nov.

Why the discrepancy?

 

[Herbert Nenninger]

They choose the strains to cover based on trends in the Southern Hemisphere during the summer which is their flu season. Mainly Australia. I don’t know much about the nuances of how they formulate it each year. Might be a question for raiderdawg or a pharmacist.

 

[RocketDawg]

They choose the strains to cover based on trends in the Southern Hemisphere during the summer which is their flu season. Mainly Australia. I don’t know much about the nuances of how they formulate it each year. Might be a question for raiderdawg or a pharmacist.

In that event, how are the folks in the southern hemisphere ever given a vaccine, given that they're sort of the lab rats for the northern hemisphere?

 

[engie]

In that event, how are the folks in the southern hemisphere ever given a vaccine, given that they're sort of the lab rats for the northern hemisphere?

Why wouldn’t they just base their following year vaccine on what actually happened in the northern hemisphere? It would just be a circular pattern wouldn’t it?

 

[Herbert Nenninger]

No, they go by the central hemisphere

 

[patdog]

Because the flu is a known virus that mutates slightly each year. We monitor it closely and pick up the mutations very quickly. Even then it's hit and miss as to how good the vaccine will be each year. This is a completely new virus we've never seen before.

 

[Shamoan]

The Flu strains are based on best guess as to what specific strain might occur. Vaccines were trivalent now quadrivalent meaning they incorporate 3/4 best guess strains it can cover every year. Influenzas mutates all the time, but influenza has markers that make the vaccine mostly effective if you get the right one. There used to be blanket coverage for A H3N2, A H1N1, and a B strain. The quadrivalent now covers 2 A and 2 B strains. Long story short, many strains, but they are known and have a catalogue on treatments, it’s just a matter of making the right guess every season...and you get 4 guesses. Covid is a novel virus and thus has caught the medical community off guard. You have to identify what works, make sure it’s safe, test efficacy on various populations, and produce it in mass quantities.

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

They can't figure out if they want type of autism they want the vaccine to give