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?

  • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Seasonal flu shots won’t protect you from bird flu.
    I think seasonal flu shots also now contain strains of H1N1 (swine flu), but not this latest bird flu.

    Getting it might still help your odds against bird flu, even if only by lowering your chances of ever catching both at the same time.
    Simultaneous infection isn’t gonna be fun.

    You getting a seasonal flu shot might also help the population in more roundabout way.
    If less people need care for seasonal flu complications, health services will be less overloaded and more available to eventual bird flu patients if a bird flu pandemic did break out.

  • JWBananas@lemmy.world
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    11 months 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.

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The current flu shot is almost certainly not effective against the current HPAI A(H5N1) strain that is in the news and making life hard for dairy and poultry farms. There likely won’t be a vaccine developed for it unless it mutates to become human-to-human transmissible. Currently, people can only contract it from exposure to sick animals or their environment. As long as you avoid contact with sick birds or cattle (or their bodily fluids or feces) you should be safe from contracting it… unless it mutates.

  • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    That poses an even greater risk as the flu season continues. In someone infected with both H5N1 and the seasonal flu, the viruses might swap genes, potentially making the bird flu capable of spreading between people as efficiently as the seasonal flu does.

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