rangrz
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2008
- Messages
- 11,691
They make a new flu shot each year.
The flu season "circles the globe" to speak, and by picking a virus (actually 3 or 4 from a few places) from somewhere else (maybe Australia) and making them into a vaccine, by the time the vaccine is ready and distributed, that virus has reached North America and it is still similar enough that it provides immunity. They do the same thing, but in reverse for flu vaccines in different parts of the world.
@Ro4eva: Close, not quite. They isolate the viruses from patients , see which ones are virulent and/or common, and then grow in the chicken eggs, and kill the viruses using a chemical (I think it's formaldehyde) and/or separate the surface antigens on the viral envelope from the rest of the virus. That gives you immunity, but the virus is dead and/or broken into pieces and not all present in the vaccine.
The flu season "circles the globe" to speak, and by picking a virus (actually 3 or 4 from a few places) from somewhere else (maybe Australia) and making them into a vaccine, by the time the vaccine is ready and distributed, that virus has reached North America and it is still similar enough that it provides immunity. They do the same thing, but in reverse for flu vaccines in different parts of the world.
@Ro4eva: Close, not quite. They isolate the viruses from patients , see which ones are virulent and/or common, and then grow in the chicken eggs, and kill the viruses using a chemical (I think it's formaldehyde) and/or separate the surface antigens on the viral envelope from the rest of the virus. That gives you immunity, but the virus is dead and/or broken into pieces and not all present in the vaccine.