[Valmar]

No, it most certainly can't.

The flu, like all viruses like it, mutates quite rapidly.

It'll just mutate in response to the "one shot" to get around it.

So, "one shot" will turn into multiple... oh wait... we do that every flu season, and it's a never-ending game of cat and mouse.

[onychomys]

The entire article is about how they're addressing (or at least trying to address) this exact problem.

[TuringNYC]

>> The flu, like all viruses like it, mutates quite rapidly. >> It'll just mutate in response to the "one shot" to get around it.

Curious how we manage to so effectively vaccinate against Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Smallpox, Chickenpox but cannot seem to do so against the Flu? Why dont those other viruses mutate rapidly to get around vaccines?

[hunterb123]

https://discoverysedge.mayo.edu/2021/03/30/researchers-clari...

> The data presented in the manuscript show that, to escape immunity, a disease-causing, or pathogenic, measles virus would need to generate a large set of mutations — simultaneously — affecting multiple parts of the surface proteins. Simultaneous disruption of at least five antibody targets is required before the virus starts developing resistance to the diversity of neutralizing antibodies in the bloodstream.

[Vecr]

Measles can't create an escape mutant, or at least it's so hard that centuries of immunity exerting pressure and gain of function experiments can't produce one. Flu recombines and reassorts like crazy. It has RNA segments (the media likes to call them "chromosomes", but they are not) that are pretty much interchangeable, so if you or a non-human animal gets infected with multiple strains, you can get a virus with a hybrid of those segments quite often. I think rubella actually can escape. The chickenpox vaccine mostly just suppresses symptoms. The smallpox vaccine is just another orthopoxvirus, so you get pretty good cross reactive immunity.

[ceejayoz]

It's not outrageous to think that mRNA vaccines may allow for more specific targeting in a way that may be less subject to immune escape than previous approaches.

[hunterb123]

The specific targeting makes it easier to allude the vaccine as only a small part of it has to mutate.

For example, natural immunity recognizes the entire coronavirus, not just the spike as the covid vaccine does. There was a study that natural immunity was more effective against the virus and variants because of this.

You could however have yearly subscription shots like we do now, just mRNA flavored that target the new strains, but there are hundreds.

I don't see the advantage mRNA would have over traditional vaccines for the flu, but for something like cancer or HIV it seems promising. Doing something your immune system can't do by itself.

[ceejayoz]

> The specific targeting makes it easier to allude the vaccine as only a small part of it has to mutate.

Nothing says an mRNA vaccine can't express more than one protein.

That said, I'm talking more about being able to target a portion of the virus that's more fragile than others - somewhere a mutation is likely to make the virus useless if a mutation occurs there.

(The ability to rapidly adjust for mutations is a bonus, too. I'm hoping we get to a regulatory regime eventually where they can tweak overnight and produce fairly locally.)

> There was a study that natural immunity was more effective against the virus and variants because of this.

There's information in the other direction now. https://news.yahoo.com/vaccine-confers-better-protection-tha...

[hunterb123]

> There's information in the other direction now. https://news.yahoo.com/vaccine-confers-better-protection-tha...

The way they conducted that study was terrible, read the qualifications and the limitations in the discussion at the bottom.

Personally the Israeli study looks a lot more sound.

[spurgu]

Here's an analysis going over the two: https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-...

[ceejayoz]

That's a heavily biased think tank. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Tucker#COVID-19_pandem...

[newaccount74]

> I'm hoping we get to a regulatory regime eventually where they can tweak overnight and produce fairly locally.

I don't think that's likely. Even if a scientist was able to adjust a vaccine overnight, you'd still need to do a clinical trial to verify that the vaccine doesn't accidentally target something that it shouldn't.

[stonemetal12]

>I don't see the advantage mRNA would have over traditional vaccines for the flu,

The current flu vaccine targeting isn't 100% reliable. If they can get better targeting for the mRNA vaccine it could be a win.

Eggs are used in the process for the traditional vaccine. Some people are allergic to eggs, so they can't take the traditional flu vaccine. For those people the mRNA version would be an option.

I would agree that it isn't an emergency, but there are benefits to it.

[dd36]

The studies I saw said the opposite. The vaccine is far more robust. Which is it?

[spurgu]

There's the CDC study and the Israeli one AFAIK, here's an analysis of the methodologies: https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-...

[tdrdt]

I think this is the right answer. Like Corona it mutates too fast. So you need to vaccinate all living creatures that can transmit the virus all at the same time.

Another way to get rid of it is to go into a global 100% lockdown for two weeks at the same time. Again animals that can transmit it included.

[hunterb123]

Coronaviruses spread easily indoors, people need necessities eventually and will spread it in some form.

Lockdowns don't work and never worked for this virus, they cause worse damage than the disease, lowers immune systems, destroys the economy and livelihoods, and they are authoritarian.

Sunlight and open air is a better baseline.