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SamsterOverdrive t1_iujz3e3 wrote

So I’m also confused as the current Covid mRNA vaccines don’t even last a year. The highest recommended flu vaccines they give only protect against 3-4 sub-strains. The strains picked are also chosen by predicting what will be the most prevalent and leads to widely different effectiveness rates year to year (usually around 40-60%). So I guess they are hoping if we use mRNA it might be general enough to prevent substantially more mutated strains. The article seems promising from what I read but I think “could last for years” is a hypothetical best-case scenario when it will need to be tweaked and administered annually.

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walrusone79 t1_iuk84rd wrote

I'm not an expert in this in any way, but my understanding was that with mRNA vaccines they can better target general antigens that offer immune responses against a wider range of drift in various strains. It also can be produced quicker, which gives the virus less time to mutate before release.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9145388/

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