They are targeting a known and very stable protein with the Covid vaccine (the spike protein). For the flu vaccine, they have to predict months ahead of time what the predominant circulating strains will be and they use that. It changes every year due to the rapid mutation rate in flu. Coronaviruses are far more stable and mutate far less frequently because that class of virus possess a molecular tool that can correct and edit mistakes in the replication of its genetic material (RNA). Flu viruses lack this editing capability so accumulate mutations rapidly.
When an advanced guess has to be made at what strain to target the annual vaccine at, there will always be much more margin for different strains emerging/circulating. |
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Follow the money. Whilst both can have awful outcomes for people, including deaths, the new coronavirus potentially was viewed as having a greater impact on the population and economies. As the previous poster stated, flu isn't 1 virus that attacks us, it's a range of them.
A and B types of flu infect us and there are various strains of each of them that infect us. They are much more subject to mutation than the relatively more stable coronavirus types of viruses. Flu is metaphorically a moving target.
Until recently we produced different vaccines for the predicted dominant strains each year. In recent years, there have been a couple of new vaccines that have been developed and under trials that were designed to prevent all types of flu. If this could be achieved, it would be more attractive, as it would attack them all and take the guesswork out of having to predict which strains would become the dominant ones in the coming winter season. It would be more successful and may not need annual repeat jabs either.
1 of the new types failed to demonstrate its effectiveness in October and the pharmaceutical company suffered bad financial impact, as it had been hoped for success being a game changer, preventing all types of flu. Another is, I understood, still in trial. There have been many years spent trying to achieve a universal flu vaccine. If we get 1, it would reduce the overheads of annual production, distribution and patient delivery of a new formulation each year, be consistently successful as well as prevent the catastrophic result of something like the flu pandemic 100 years ago. Such a flu pandemic is predicted to happen again and may be equivalent to the Sars cov-2 virus in its impact on the world.
We get by with the current method for flu as we've not had a repeat of the devastation of 1918. We had nothing for this coronavirus but had many companies willing to prove themselves and to gamble on winning the higb payouts, some of them receiving governments financial aid trying to do so. |
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By *69BANMan
over a year ago
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"If the flu has been around for years and has a vaccine that’s 50% effective, how come a new virus vaccine has 95%? How come they don’t put the same effort/tech into existing diseases? "
Because what you're seeing at the moment are interim results not yet peer-reviewed or independently verified. Until this has happened and the regulatory authorities have gone through it all, we don't yet know the efficacy. This is what happens in clinical trials, and because it's COVID there is greater interest for what these results show. There is a EU clinical trials register available to all, but who outside the field wants to know a new blood pressure medication? |
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"They are targeting a known and very stable protein with the Covid vaccine (the spike protein). For the flu vaccine, they have to predict months ahead of time what the predominant circulating strains will be and they use that. It changes every year due to the rapid mutation rate in flu. Coronaviruses are far more stable and mutate far less frequently because that class of virus possess a molecular tool that can correct and edit mistakes in the replication of its genetic material (RNA). Flu viruses lack this editing capability so accumulate mutations rapidly.
When an advanced guess has to be made at what strain to target the annual vaccine at, there will always be much more margin for different strains emerging/circulating."
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