Replies

It is a virus. The common cold is a virus. How long have they been searching for a cure for it? Seem like forever and they still don't have one.

The yearly flu shot is just that, a shot. It is not a vaccine because it is different each year. Sometimes it works and other times it does not.

Tetanus has a vaccine. It last a long time and is effective. Measles has a vaccine and it is effective. And so on.

Simply, there isn't going to be a vaccine for this virus. A shot, maybe!

Vaccine development and marketing are complicated and expensive, with uncertain potential to generate profit. Viruses also differ in their susceptibility to traditional whole virus vaccine strategies. New tools and approaches though seem near to revolutionizing the field.

New vaccine efforts select and duplicate part of a virus and make it the active component of a vaccine. Some vaccine developers are also pursuing easier to administer oral, nasal, and skin contact routes as alternatives to injections. Freeze drying and other technologies aim to avoid the need for refrigeration of vaccines.

Ten or twenty years from now, we may see the beginning of a wave of new vaccines marketed that are administered through a smart skin patch that does not have any dangerous reactions and does not even need to be refrigerated. Or, a simple pill or food treat might be the means of administration.

As for the common cold, it is actually caused by a set of viruses, with some even being in the coronavirus family. This makes it hard to target the common cold for a vaccine because numerous injections or a complicated multishot would be required for full effectiveness.

One particular cold virus, the Respiratory Syntactical Virus (RSV), is being actively pursued as a vaccine target because it causes numerous deaths among infants and the elderly. In that case, the severity of the illness and the size of the susceptable populations make for enough of a business case to attract several competiting vaccine development efforts.

The annual flu shot is in fact a vaccine -- just not a very good one. The economic and medical justifications for the problematic annual flu shot is that as a matter of net costs, keeping the incidence of flu down saves lives and reduces hospitalizations.

And, to get back to Trump's point, there are several pandemics and numerous epidemics that medical science has a hard time recognizing as illnesses today because either the symptoms are different now, or the virus briefly crossed to humans from an animal reservoir species and then disappeared. Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses have done so repeatedly, and it is thought that numerous coronaviruses have the potential to do so as well.

Like almost all disasters, epidemics are self-limiting and survivable -- for most people.

The flu shot is most definitely a vaccine. It's different every year because there are many different strains of flu virus, so drug companies and government entities (like the CDC) make a "best guess" each year of the (usually) three flu strains they expect to cause the most trouble. Sometimes they guess right, sometimes wrong.

If you get the flu shot every year, you may notice that some years your arm gets quite sore, but other years it's like you got a shot of normal saline. The mild reaction is because you're already immune to the strains in that year's shot.

Tetanus is caused by a bacteria. Vaccines against bacteria are only effective for a period of time; you generally need a "booster shot" every few years.

*The yearly flu shot is just that, a shot. It is not a vaccine because it is different each year. Sometimes it works and other times it does not.*

Are you freakin’ kidding me ? That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve read on FR today. Just what do you think is in that shot ?
A VACCINE !!!! Pull your head out and get an education. Please.

May God help this planet.