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?
For those (like me) who aren’t familiar with virus genetics, this is called recombination. Yes, it is possible between influenza and bird flu because they are the same virus type.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8439/#A2330
And to further drive it home, that’s how we got SARS (civets), MERS (camels), and COVID (bats/pangolins/unknown).
So get the damn flu shot. The new cell-based vaccines are much more likely to match the actively circulating strains than the older egg-based ones (due to so-called egg adaptation).
We nearly had a patient zero in Louisiana already, and their case was only an H5 mutation (not recombination from human strains). https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-12232024.html
H5 is widespread in wild birds, and it is spreading to cats. It is only a matter of time.
Also, the flu shot is fucking easy. You won’t feel a thing. The needle is tiny so you don’t feel a thing, maybe a slight pinch but once it’s past the skin it’s painless. The most common side effect is a sore arm for a day, but no worse than you get from a workout, and if it’s bad just take some Tylenol or weed.
Next time you’re at the pharmacy, just get it.
gonna confess I was high on edibles when I got my recent covid and flu shot😂
Totally worth it as the rest of my family got sick while I was working doing fine
It makes me sleepy for a few days but totally worth it.
Fair enough👌
Everyone I’ve talked to so far said that it mostly makes them happy, halucinatory, and/or drowsy