I keep hearing I should get a flu shot to help prevent bird flu — but I thought flu shots only prevented illness from the particular strains the shot was designed for. Does getting a traditional flu shot do anything to prevent bird flu transmission?

  • @Boddhisatva
    17•1 day ago

    The current flu shot is almost certainly not effective against the current HPAI A(H5N1) strain that is in the news and making life hard for dairy and poultry farms. There likely won’t be a vaccine developed for it unless it mutates to become human-to-human transmissible. Currently, people can only contract it from exposure to sick animals or their environment. As long as you avoid contact with sick birds or cattle (or their bodily fluids or feces) you should be safe from contracting it… unless it mutates.

    • Natanael
      8•1 day ago

      There are vaccines in development already, but mass production is a complete different issue.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•1 day ago

        There are already lots of H5N1 vaccines for both animals and humans, and the US, for example, has stockpiles of millions. But if at some point the virus mutates to be able to circulate among humans (which it has not), existing vaccines would almost certainly not provide protection against that new virus. Since there is no virus like that yet, there is no vaccine for it yet, but pharmaceutical companies have been creating flu vaccines for many decades and would probably be able to create one and scale it up quickly

      • @Boddhisatva
        1•1 day ago

        Thank you. I was unaware that anyone was working on a new vaccine.

        • bluGill
          5•1 day ago

          Farmers want to vaccinate their herds. Chickens appearantly don’t vaccinate well (i have no idea why). But cows and pigs tend to take well to vaccination.

          the us has killed tens of millon chickens over the many years of bird flus - trying to stop it be killing ever bird that might possible been exposed thus ensuring none can spread it. farmers have also enacted extreem bio security measures trying to ensure it doesn’t get to their flocks. It is mostly working as chickens are not infected nearly as often as a few years ago. However cows and pigs are now being hit and they have different situations.