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Does getting a flu shot do anything for bird flu?
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2024
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I'm curious, if you don't mind weighing in a little further, do you mean that you're not currently worried about contracting bird flu or do you mean that you're not worried about the potential of this strain to become transmissible between humans.
As a lay person who's been following the outbreak for almost 3 years now, it seems that the goal posts for concern have been continually moving.
The former! I’m not currently worried about contracting it, and neither should anyone who isn’t hanging out on an animal farm. That said, of course flu and other viruses can jump species, and flu mutates a lot faster than some other viruses. There is never any way to rule out a wild flu mutating into something that can impact human health more broadly.
To your second point about goalposts moving - I’m not sure specifically what you’re referencing, but perceived risk is inherently personal and can never be a one-size-fits-all calculation. We might have a tidy risk ratio in a paper that pertains to a certain population, but it doesn’t always translate to the general public. Typically we leave that stuff to CDC, because they have whole committees full of brilliant people to synthesize the evidence and argue about what to tell the public and how. Science changes and so do recommendations as we learn more. I would recommend getting further H5 “news” and updates directly from CDC. You can sign up for the MMWR which will have weekly stats and case details.
What are your thoughts on the Louisiana patient, particularly after the December 26th update regarding sequencing?
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-12232024.html
It’s one patient and these rapid changes happened before in human patients, so who knows. All other H5 outbreaks to date have been limited and sporadic. We’d need more genomic data from more human cases. They are also going to monitor these cases closely so we’ll find out more as we go.