[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.