[Dog Gone]

I think it's a given that the world's population will be unprotected during the first six months to a year of an avian flu outbreak.

[EternalHope]

I think it's a given that the world's population will be unprotected during the first six months to a year of an avian flu outbreak.

Yep. And it could easily take longer.

For a meaningful vaccine to be developed, produced, distributed, and administered that quickly would require immense resources, and success would not be guaranteed even then.

Even if we are able to develop and produce a sufficiently effective vaccine, the organizational skills needed to distribute and administer the vaccine are missing in much of the world.

[bitt]

http://nytimes.com/2005/08/07/health/07vaccine.html?ei=5094&en=2ce7397eb72918ff&hp=&ex=1123387200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

'WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - Government scientists say they have successfully tested in people a vaccine that they believe can protect against the strain of avian influenza that is spreading in birds through Asia and Russia.

Health officials have been racing to develop a vaccine because they worry that if that strain mutated and combined with a human influenza virus to create a new virus, it could spread rapidly through the world. (The vaccine cannot lead to such a situation because it is made from killed virus.)

Tens of millions of birds have died from infection with the virus and culling to prevent the spread of the virus. About 100 people have been infected, and about 50 have died from this strain of the avian influenza virus, called A(H5N1). So far there has been no sustained human-to-human transmission, but that is what health officials fear, because it could cause a pandemic. And that fear has driven the intense research to develop a vaccine.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said that while the vaccine that has undergone preliminary tests could be used on an emergency basis if a pandemic developed, it would still be several months before that vaccine is tested further and, if licensed, offered to the public.

"It's good news," Dr. Fauci said. "We have a vaccine."

...........

[Kelly_2000]

"I think it's a given that the world's population will be unprotected during the first six months to a year of an avian flu outbreak."

That depends on the distribution and readiness of the H5N1 vaccine, or the timely introduction of cross beneficial trivalent vaccines in THIS inoculation season (September 2005)rather than the low efficacy monovalent high-specificity vaccines offered today