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?
The former! I’m not currently worried about contracting it, and neither should anyone who isn’t hanging out on an animal farm. That said, of course flu and other viruses can jump species, and flu mutates a lot faster than some other viruses. There is never any way to rule out a wild flu mutating into something that can impact human health more broadly.
To your second point about goalposts moving - I’m not sure specifically what you’re referencing, but perceived risk is inherently personal and can never be a one-size-fits-all calculation. We might have a tidy risk ratio in a paper that pertains to a certain population, but it doesn’t always translate to the general public. Typically we leave that stuff to CDC, because they have whole committees full of brilliant people to synthesize the evidence and argue about what to tell the public and how. Science changes and so do recommendations as we learn more. I would recommend getting further H5 “news” and updates directly from CDC. You can sign up for the MMWR which will have weekly stats and case details.
What are your thoughts on the Louisiana patient, particularly after the December 26th update regarding sequencing?
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-12232024.html
It’s one patient and these rapid changes happened before in human patients, so who knows. All other H5 outbreaks to date have been limited and sporadic. We’d need more genomic data from more human cases. They are also going to monitor these cases closely so we’ll find out more as we go.