Flu Shots

[sonjack2847]

1 hour ago, Gary D said:

And started in June.

The shot should cost about 700p

I paid just under 1k but that is a 5 year shot they also do Pneumonia.

[Tommy T.]

3 hours ago, sonjack2847 said:

I paid just under 1k but that is a 5 year shot they also do Pneumonia.

A five year shot for flu? Never heard of that. I am interested in the pneumonia shot too... why not?

Sonjack, did you get this at a Watson's or at a clinic?

1k sounds like a bargain to me if it prevents or mitigates flu...

Edited October 11, 2019 by Tommy T.

[hk blues]

2 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

A five year shot for flu? Never heard of that. I am interested in the pneumonia shot too... why not?

Sonjack, did you get this at a Watson's or at a clinic?

I wonder how effective it would be. Tom - Flu strains tend to change?

[Tommy T.]

Just now, hk blues said:

I wonder how effective it would be. Tom - Flu strains tend to change?

Yeah... That's exactly what I was thinking. I was just reading an article online about it and the strains are constantly mutating - even within one season. Flu is very scary to me. I got pneumonia and was super ill from it the last time I had it long ago. I couldn't do work or anything for almost three weeks...

[Gary D]

The flu shot is just a best guess what the next strain will be, the effectiveness varies year to year depending on how good their ( WHO I believe) guess was. There are also different strains of pneumonia and there are different shots that cover broader strains than others.

[sonjack2847]

16 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

A five year shot for flu? Never heard of that. I am interested in the pneumonia shot too... why not?

Sonjack, did you get this at a Watson's or at a clinic?

1k sounds like a bargain to me if it prevents or mitigates flu...

Watsons,actually I think it was the Pneumonia I had without the flu or it could have been the other way round.

[Dave Hounddriver]

11 minutes ago, sonjack2847 said:

I think it was the Pneumonia I had

I just had my flu shot.  Local doctors here are recommending getting it before Oct 31.  The pharmacist told me the flu shot is good for a year but the pneumonia shot is good for many years .  I need to get me one of those pneumonia shots but he told me not to get both at the same time.

[Mike J]

17 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

A five year shot for flu? Never heard of that.

Neither had I.  Appears to be in the research and may happen in the future category.  Remember the "old days" when you had to do research without Google. 

https://nationalpost.com/health/a-long-lasting-flu-shot-that-youd-only-have-to-get-once-every-5-10-years-could-be-on-its-way

The most vexing thing about the annual flu vaccination is that it’s annual.

You have to get it every year, and many people don’t do so. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that only 2 out of 5 Americans have received the shot so far this flu season.

Wouldn’t it be easier if a flu shot were a once-in-a-lifetime event, or even once or twice in a decade? Public health officials see that as a potential game-changer.

“If we had an effective universal vaccine, it would take a huge dent out of health-care costs [and] disruption of work, school attendance and social activities,” says William Schaffner, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “It could change the entire way we prevent influenza.”

It could change the entire way we prevent influenza
The idea no longer seems so elusive, says Barney Graham, deputy director of the vaccine research center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Modern molecular technology enables scientists “to design things at atomic resolution,” which “really wasn’t possible until the last few years,” says Graham, who is trying to develop what scientists call a universal, or long-lasting, vaccine.

Several groups of scientists, including Graham’s, have reported progress toward a vaccine that could protect against flu permanently with a single injection or with a shot given every five to 10 years.

Either approach would be a big advance over current practice, which requires health officials to predict major flu viruses nine months in advance so manufacturers can adjust the vaccine each year. With a universal vaccine, “we wouldn’t have to worry about that,” Schaffner says. “Each year we could go after people who hadn’t been vaccinated before. It could be a year-long, daily vaccination activity, not just focused in the fall.”

The hope is that such a broad-spectrum vaccine also could protect against rare but potentially deadly pandemics. “It would be the single most important thing we can do in public health today,” says Michael Osterholm, a professor of public health and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

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While flu can strike anyone, it is most dangerous for the very young, the elderly and the chronically ill. Globally, seasonal flu epidemics produce 3 million to 5 million cases of serious disease every year, resulting in 250,000 to 500,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

Symptoms include fever, dry cough, headache, muscle and joint pain, severe malaise, sore throat and runny nose.

The two major types of seasonal influenza viruses that can infect humans are A and B. Type A viruses, which are constantly changing, are the ones usually responsible for yearly epidemics. Scientists classify type A viruses into subtypes based on the combinations of the two molecules that cover the surface of the virus, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase.

Vaccines work by stimulating the production of antibodies against pieces of the virus. A universal vaccine would need to provoke antibodies that bind to “conserved” regions of the virus – that is, areas that stay the same and are common to most flu viruses. Currently, seasonal vaccines are designed to respond to the hemagglutinin head, which changes every year.

Researchers are using different strategies that target the common areas.

Some very impressive scientific efforts are underway to make this real
Two groups working separately, for example, are focusing on hemagglutinin’s stem, or stalk, which, unlike the head, doesn’t change. To do so, each team had to first figure out how to stabilize the stalk after lopping off the head. (The head is removed because it draws key immune system cells – those needed to make antibodies – away from the stem.) Each using a different approach, the teams have found a way to anchor the stem once the head is eliminated.

Another team built an entirely new virus in the lab by using recombinant DNA techniques, then designed a vaccine based on its conserved elements. “We hope that by doing that, our immune system will remember the conserved regions . . . so that changes in the head won’t matter,” says Peter Palese, chair of the microbiology department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Finally, another group has developed an experimental multiyear vaccine based on the genetic sequences of flu strains that have appeared in the past century. These researchers believe it is unrealistic to assume that any experimental vaccines, including theirs, will last a lifetime without requiring an update; thus, they are reluctant to predict the effectiveness of their own beyond five to 10 years – but even that would be an improvement over having to get an annual shot.

“We can go back in history and make vaccines that protect against all the variants for the last 100 years,” says Ted Ross, director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “That doesn’t mean we can do 100 years in the future, but we still can prevent a lot of disease. We just don’t know when and if one approach will have longer staying power than another. We’ll find out.”

While animal studies of various prospective vaccines are promising, it probably will be years before researchers start testing them in humans. Still, public health officials are excited. The idea of a universal vaccine seemed a pipe dream until recently. “But now, or very soon, it may no longer be a flight of fancy,” Schaffner says. “Some very impressive scientific efforts are underway to make this real.’”

[Tommy T.]

13 minutes ago, Mike J said:

Neither had I.  Appears to be in the research and may happen in the future category.  Remember the "old days" when you had to do research without Google. 

 

Thanks for posting that, Mike.

 Very interesting article that potentially offers a lot of hope for the future, I think.

I would gladly pay P5,000 or much more to not ever get the flu again... Believe me, it was horrible years ago and can only be worse now that I am an old fart...

Edited October 12, 2019 by Tommy T.
fixing punctuation

[sonjack2847]

1 hour ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

I just had my flu shot.  Local doctors here are recommending getting it before Oct 31.  The pharmacist told me the flu shot is good for a year but the pneumonia shot is good for many years .  I need to get me one of those pneumonia shots but he told me not to get both at the same time.

I just checked with my friend and it was the pneumonia shot we had, sorry for the mis-information guys.The shot I had is 5 years and was just under 1k at watsons. So now maybe I will get a flu shot as well my daughter is also going to get a flu shot but that is at the doctors and is 3k.