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?
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?
There are vaccines in development already, but mass production is a complete different issue.
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
Thank you. I was unaware that anyone was working on a new vaccine.
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.