I keep hearing I should get a flu shot to help prevent bird flu — but I thought flu shots only prevented illness from the particular strains the shot was designed for. Does getting a traditional flu shot do anything to prevent bird flu transmission?

  • JWBananas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    23 hours ago

    It doesn’t directly but it can protect you from also being infected with human flu at the same time. That could easily turn into the patient zero scenario if the virii exchange genes, so it is still important to prevent/mitigate from happening.

      • JWBananas@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        19 hours ago

        And to further drive it home, that’s how we got SARS (civets), MERS (camels), and COVID (bats/pangolins/unknown).

        So get the damn flu shot. The new cell-based vaccines are much more likely to match the actively circulating strains than the older egg-based ones (due to so-called egg adaptation).

        We nearly had a patient zero in Louisiana already, and their case was only an H5 mutation (not recombination from human strains). https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-12232024.html

        H5 is widespread in wild birds, and it is spreading to cats. It is only a matter of time.

        • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          4·
          19 hours ago

          Also, the flu shot is fucking easy. You won’t feel a thing. The needle is tiny so you don’t feel a thing, maybe a slight pinch but once it’s past the skin it’s painless. The most common side effect is a sore arm for a day, but no worse than you get from a workout, and if it’s bad just take some Tylenol or weed.

          Next time you’re at the pharmacy, just get it.