Preventing influenza in children, we think, will reduce influenza in our society.
There's a lot of people who should not be vaccinated with smallpox vaccine.
Persons who live in households who have people with immunosuppressive conditions or taking drugs for cancer, chemotherapy for example, or households who have an infant less than 1 year of age, these kinds of persons should not take smallpox vaccine.
The logistics of conducting a large scale vaccination program, if we're talking on the order of millions, would be enormously complex and difficult to conceive how we would successfully do that.
It takes a fair amount of restraint using two people to hold down a 3-year-old and give 'em an injection. It's such an easier vaccine to deliver in children. The babies aren't crying. The moms leave our office happy.
Recently, some strains of bird flu viruses have infected people in Asia. There is concern these new strains could cause a pandemic, but they are not infecting people in the United States at this time. Rather than wait for that possibility to occur, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is testing avian influenza vaccines.
It gives us some reassurance that by continuing to monitor the current virus in birds, we can get a sense as to when it'll be an efficient virus. We may have some time to develop new vaccines and better therapies.
People who were vaccinated many decades ago are probably partially protected, but not completely protected against smallpox.
Copyright © 2024 Electric Goat Media. All Rights Reserved.