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Yancy_Farnesworth t1_j9ul5fz wrote

Reply to comment by Ch3mee in Does the common flu vaccine offer any buffer against H5N1 (Bird Flu)? by Esc_ape_artist

> Because a vaccine is already developed.

People really don't understand how much effort is expended annually to update the vaccine for flu season. The flu virus mutates really easily unlike COVID. It's why we have an annual flu shot. If someone is infected with multiple flu variants, the variants literally start swapping parts creating essentially a new strain. We've been developing new flu vaccines every year for decades. It's not just a few tweaks every year, it's literally a new vaccine every year.

The WHO is responsible for tracking flu strains going around the world and creating the vaccine for that year. This requires a lot of tracking of flu cases world-wide and analyzing the strains going around and creating a vaccine that targets the strains going around. And there are a lot of strains circulating, it's literally impossible to vaccinate against all of them.

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Ch3mee t1_j9usoac wrote

You lost me at the "unlike Covid" where we have been through like 6 major variants, with a few dozen minor variants, inside 2 years time.

Usually, a flu vaccine isn't one strain. The vaccine is a combination of several strains that researchers believe will be predominate that year. But, even subvariants of strains don't require absolutely new development of vaccine. It depends on the anti-gen of the strain. Amd this mostly deals with flu A. Flu B is a bit different. Vaccines will have B and a few strains of A in a yearly shot.

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Yancy_Farnesworth t1_j9uwkrk wrote

> where we have been through like 6 major variants, with a few dozen minor variants, inside 2 years time.

That's the point? It's a relative comparison between the flu virus and the COVID virus, not a claim that COVID doesn't mutate. We would be in deep trouble if COVID had the same potential to mutate that the flu virus does. We're lucky that the flu virus doesn't have the same level of immune evasion/suppression that a lot of coronaviruses have.

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