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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 1, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Uhhhhhh I don't want to do a lit review so please forgive me if I get some of the details wrong but basically they try and predict well in advance which mutations are going to be prevalent the next year (like almost a year in advance) and make all the vaccines accordingly.

So it's more that a year ago or whenever they were actually selecting the strains for this year, H5N1 wasn't looking as scary, but maybe it could be included in next years' (assuming we don't get a pandemic and manage to rush a separate vaccine before then)?

Yeah my understanding is that we are sitting on a stockpile of at least 5 mill doses, and our routine process could be reasonably effective at dealing with this without resorting to "novel" technologies, but it's very severe and potentially a fast moving problem.