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The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. Developing a vaccine for a new str

The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. Developing a vaccine for a new strain of the flu is pretty mechanical at this point but each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains that World Health Organization scientists predict will be the dominant strains causing the most damage (it gets reevaluated twice a year). The way that most people take the vaccine (a live but weakened version of the virus) it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once so an educated guess of three strains is our chosen sweet spot. The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process but we haven't figured out an economic way of developing rapid vaccine candidates for rhino/coronavirus strains like we have for the flu. Moderna's RNA method might be a game changer here but it'll take a while for their method to be approved as a platform instead of a single drug candidate.

bluGill 6y ago
>The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. This doesn't make sense. Of course we cannot predict what mutation will happen. Are you trying to say we don't know which mutation take off? Even then the issue that we don't know what future mutation might take off is a problem. > each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains This year it was 4 different strains. > it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once I've never heard this before. Can you provide a citation so I can verify it? >The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process There are a lot of different viruses for the common cold. There have been vaccines for them, but the odds of catching any one strain are so low that a vaccine against one isn't really significant.

bluGill 6y ago

>The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. This doesn't make sense. Of course we cannot predict what mutation will happen. Are you trying to say we don't know which mutation take off? Even then the issue that we don't know what future mutation might take off is a problem. > each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains This year it was 4 different strains. > it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once I've never heard this before. Can you provide a citation so I can verify it? >The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process There are a lot of different viruses for the common cold. There have been vaccines for them, but the odds of catching any one strain are so low that a vaccine against one isn't really significant.