re: Alabama Board Coronavirus Thread

While it’s true the Coronavirus has mutated and continues to mutate, so far the mutations have been subtle and minor. It appears to have been enough to have affected the contagiousness and the severity of the disease, but not enough to elude your immune system or render a vaccine impotent.

That could change but right now, this isn’t influenza we’re dealing with which has constant, significant antigenic drift that makes it a bitch to develop a viable and accurate vaccine. That’s why in a good year, flu vaccine is only about 45% effective and in a bad year 20%.

Most flu vaccine is still produced using an old and rather primitive looking technique where scientists get together in the early spring and predict (educated guess) which influenza strains will be the dominant ones the next flu season and how those strains will mutate or drift. Then they develop the vaccine and grow the results in millions of chicken eggs. That’s why you can’t take the vaccine if you are allergic to eggs. It takes literally months to produce the next year’s vaccine so if they screw up or the virus does something unpredictable, they and you and I are screwed. There’s no time for a do-over.

Now the effectiveness numbers are a little deceiving. To CDC, effective means prevented the flu. While that is the goal, even if the vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting sick, it usually means a less severe flu and a lower mortality rate so it is definitely worth getting one. And considering that almost every year less than 50% of Americans get flu vaccination, you can see why flu is still a serious health concern. We have relatively high deaths from the flu because not enough people get vaccinated with an imperfect vaccine. And this year more than ever, being able to remain healthy and not wonder if it’s flu or ‘Rona is important.