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Ch3mee t1_j9usoac wrote

Reply to comment by Yancy_Farnesworth in Does the common flu vaccine offer any buffer against H5N1 (Bird Flu)? by Esc_ape_artist

You lost me at the "unlike Covid" where we have been through like 6 major variants, with a few dozen minor variants, inside 2 years time.

Usually, a flu vaccine isn't one strain. The vaccine is a combination of several strains that researchers believe will be predominate that year. But, even subvariants of strains don't require absolutely new development of vaccine. It depends on the anti-gen of the strain. Amd this mostly deals with flu A. Flu B is a bit different. Vaccines will have B and a few strains of A in a yearly shot.

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Yancy_Farnesworth t1_j9uwkrk wrote

> where we have been through like 6 major variants, with a few dozen minor variants, inside 2 years time.

That's the point? It's a relative comparison between the flu virus and the COVID virus, not a claim that COVID doesn't mutate. We would be in deep trouble if COVID had the same potential to mutate that the flu virus does. We're lucky that the flu virus doesn't have the same level of immune evasion/suppression that a lot of coronaviruses have.

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