Reply #22: The problem is not expirations of vaccines, but viral mutations [View All]

[Psephos]

Planning for influenza vaccines is notoriously tricky (remember the swine flu vaccines?) because the flu virus mutates so rapidly. If you make a batch of vaccine for the virus in its current form, then that vaccine may be useless for the mutated form of the virus that eventually causes the epidemic. Avian flu is not an epidemic danger in its present form. Researchers instead are trying to predict future mutations that could give the virus increased ease of transmission and increased virulence.

At best, planning vaccines is a probability game that requires clinical insight and a feel for emergent patterns in complex genetic structures. The people who work on viral mutatation prediction are not doughbrains.

Peace.

EDIT: typo fix