[aaisola]

My understanding is that with the flu shot scientists and epidemiologists essentially make an educated guess as to which strains are going to be prevalent in a particular year.

Why is COVID-19 different where the expectation is that one vaccine will prove a panacea. The virus has already shown that it can mutate similar to the flu vaccine.

[jeherr]

Influenza is a family of related viruses. COVID-19 is actually the disease caused by the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is the actual virus, and it is only a single virus in the family of coronaviruses. Other coronaviruses include SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and a host of others which just cause a subset of the common cold.

This should be compared more to something like the H1N1 outbreak, which was a single influenza virus that was particularly deadly for some subset of people. That was just one type of influenza.

[jjcon]

Stupid question - why will a coronavirus vaccine take so long even when they say people are working at an incredible pace if we can produce a new flu vaccine each year? Are scientists guessing strains multiple years in advance so there is time to produce a vaccine or something?

[KaiserPro]

Its not stupid. Its a new vaccine, to treat a new virus thats is in a class of virus thats never had a vaccine.

if that makes any sense?

the yearly flu vaccines are tweaks to an already understood vaccine, (minor releases) Sometimes there are major releases but thats for a jab that targets a different class of flu (h5n1 vs h1n2)

this is an entirely new vaccine, for a virus that has never had a vaccine, so its more like a v1.0 release on a new platform.

[selectodude]

The flu vaccine is simply deactivated flu virus that is grown in eggs. The big issue here is that coronavirus is “smart” enough to not reproduce in eggs.