I don’t like the term “escape” very much, because it makes it sound like the new variants are completely unaffected by our existing antibodies, when that isn’t remotely true. Yes, the reactivity of the antibodies is lower in the new omicron sub-variants compared with the original omicron, but our antibodies are still working, and the degree of lessend effect is much smaller than the difference between Wuhan and omicron.
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I mean my main thing is we don’t re-test the flu shot every year, right? We say it’s basically the same with minor tweaks, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be safe, and we all take it. We need to get COVID shots to that point ASAP.
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But the mRNA vaccines were supposed to be easier to update than, like, the flu vaccines that get updated every year without much rigmarole. So far it has been slower and harder.
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I’d have to look into this more but I don’t think they’re rotating in brand new flu antigens every year. I think they’re rotating in various H and N proteins.
This would be a new antigen so it’s not a perfect comparison
Not sure why changing an H and an N is not a big deal but changing a Spike is.
I’m not calling it a big deal. I think, and stress think, that the antigens are previously tested because flu uses the base structure from a base set of antigens. The new mRNA sequence would create a new antigen, and the last thing anyone wants is the swine flu vaccine fuckup
i don’t think the flu vaccine is basically the same. there are two fluA and two fluB variants, which outcompete each other based on the year, and different flu shots works differently against each variant. there are pike 4-5 flu vac shots, including a quadrivalent shot, plus a nasal spray. little differences can turn out to be rather significant
That only makes my point even more. We don’t test the flu shot every year, we just take it. The more change we’re accepting there, the more we should be accepting with COVID-19 which is a much bigger threat to us.
See I’m pretty sure all of the various components have been tested. I don’t think it’s de novo at all
what are you talking about? they still very much test the vaccine every year. they don’t have perfect predictions about which vaccine will work best against each strain, but it ludicrous to say we just accept it
I mean, it still takes six months to spin up and test new flu vaccines and we’ve got a whole infrastructure set up to handle that. Banging out vaccines that target BA.4 and BA.5 this fast seems impressive to me.
Another factor that can determine which strains of the flu will be included in the current flu shot is the ability to produce a working vaccine against that particular strain. Every vaccine must be thoroughly tested and approved by the FDA before it is made available to the public.
(brought to you by imagine-if-churchill-had-posted-that.co.uk)
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link’s dead
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smh
Pretty half-assed bait.
Edit: I guess goofy will still bite.
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Call it whatever you want - I’ll call out the obvious two-faced nonsense that goes on in the best covid thread on the internet if I feel like it thank you.
I do what I can.
They must skip to a certain phase then, because it takes way less than a year to get them out.
None of that specifies how many phases they go through, the CDC site you linked only talks about serology tests. Pretty sure Moderna and Pfizer are still going through Phase 2/3 tests and giving efficacy numbers, but I could be wrong about that or I could be wrong about the flu shot testing process. But I’d like to see more details on what Scientific American considers “thoroughly tested and approved.”
Regardless, they get from start to finish quicker on flu shots than we do on COVID boosters, and that should change.
Yeah I mean, Moderna will be in the 8-9 month range. But without testing they could conceivably get shots in arms in a couple months, so getting it down to 3-6 months seems like a reasonable goal. mRNA technology moves faster than the technology used in the flu shots, so they should be able to beat 6 months.
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they don’t skip phases, cdc runs RCTs for tweaked vaccines even during off-season in anticipation for changing viruses, and continually sequence detected infections.