Flu Vaccine Update, Swine Edition

[tongodeon]

Remember when I told you fools to get a flu vaccination? The CDC's guesses for the 2008-2009 flu season were A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1), A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2), and B/Florida/4/2006. The 2009 swine flu outbreak is A-H1N1, the CDC's first guess. That's good news for people who got vaccinated this year, even after the already good news that we had

Comments

[tongodeon]

I understand that the swine H1N1 and human H1N1 are different, and that there isn't anything yet that's targeted against the swine version. Then again it's my understanding that the existing influenza vaccine that's targeted against H1N1 and H3N2 also confers a partial protection (40%?) against other variants, and that the closer those variants are to the target the better it works, so ... yay?

Anyway I'd expect a swine flu targeted vaccine would work better than last year's vaccine, and I'll be getting one of those as well if/when it comes out, but until then I'm thinking that getting last year's vaccine is still better than not.

[tongodeon]

the CDC is sounding like it's definitely trying to keep people from thinking the vaccine will protect them much, if at all

Yeah, I thought I'd covered that in my "caveats" section, which is why I wrote "the seasonal influenza vaccine H1N1 strain might not provide protection, so maybe I'm just patting myself on the back over nothing". It looks like it was good for the ordinary flu this winter, but not so much for this thing.

I've updated the post to include the even more pessimistic declaration that "the seasonal influenza vaccine H1N1 strain is thought to be unlikely to provide protection".

[quercus]

The trouble with flu vaccination is that it's a best-guess against the chosen human strains at most, and of almost no benefit against a suddenly appearing threat.

Been there, Done that

[jakeinhartsel]

Hey i got Flu Vaccine, Ft. Lenard Wood 1954. Got sick as hell.

I have gotten the Flu perhaps 4 times since then, never worse than a couple of days in bed.

No plans to ever get another flu shot.

jake

Re: Been there, Done that

[tongodeon]

i got Flu Vaccine, Ft. Lenard Wood 1954. Got sick as hell.

Yeah, me too. Doesn't actually change anything.

[mmcirvin]

Yeah, the moment I heard the words "swine flu" in the news I immediately thought of Gerald Ford. I really do think that episode made a lot of people suspicious of mass vaccination programs for decades.

I hadn't remembered that the Legionnaire's Disease incident occurred against the backdrop of preparations for mass swine-flu vaccination.