Wazit wrote:Nope sorry, vaccines do not act the same as antibiotics. ...
You say that it wouldn't happen that quick, then turn around and give a short term illustration of 'right now'. However fundamentally all a vaccine does is manipulate the immune system to develop the immune response to counter disease being immunized. If for some reason the body can not completely eliminate it would be possible for a rapid mutation to occur.
There are several relevant differences between vaccines and antibiotics (or antivirals as the case may be). An antibiotic or antiviral typically interferes with a single part of the target microbe's metabolism, and are applied to treat an existing infection (i.e. a microbial population of millions to trillions). There is therefore a large population to generate mutations, only one mutation is needed to provide immunity, and anything with that mutation has a very strong selective advantage. In contrast, vaccines are preventative, so they only have to counter small populations of microbes. They typically contain multiple antigens, each of which has multiple sites available for antibodies to attach. Further, the ridiculous variability of antibodies means that an individual's antibodies are more or less unique. Avoiding the antibodies produced by vaccination would therefore typically take multiple simultaneous mutations, and the innovations may have limited effect against someone else's antibodies.
Wazit wrote:On the subject of flu, the reason they are able to mutate very quickly is because they are made up of many different units (H and N) that is able to be jumbled up and combined, unlike any other microbes. So creating a vaccine for one flu strain is gonna be redundant by the next season. That's why there is always the fear that a human flu and any other avian/swine flu combined. A virus that spreads easily among humans but has the danger of avian/swine flu is something to be feared
[/quote]Besides the modularity of flu, it is an RNA virus, therefore lacking the better error correction of DNA, therefore mutating much faster than DNA bugs. It's also one of the most common and contagious diseases around, so there's always a gigantic population producing new mutations all the time, with strong selective pressure to produce differences from last year's population.
Sentios wrote:Since this was based on the above I don't have much to say. However the question one has to wonder is why swine/avian flu are so much more deadly than the human flu. I have heard suggestion that it was engineered to be that way but I'm not going to jump the gun with that.
I've heard that, due to avian and swine strains not being endemic to human populations, their antigens are very different from normal flu, therefore old antibodies are completely ineffective, rather than only somewhat due to relatively small yearly changes. Also, normal flu is strongly optimized to be contagious but NOT deadly, since deadliness would interfere with exposure to uninfected hosts. An imported flu would not have this optimization, while it may still be contagious enough to get around the world.
Sentios wrote:Sample size is too small, it doesn't meet some criteria of autism but is similar enough to the layperson, it's a very rare occurrence for reason X, extra attention to detail during production and administration because there's tests being done, etc.
How about this
paper and its ten pages of references