In my prior blog post on Why Get Vaccinated and How Do Vaccines Work, I tried to explain what vaccines are, how they work at a very basic level, and the benefits of vaccines that might weigh in favor of immunization for those who have no or only a rudimentary understanding of vaccines, immunology andContinue reading “Weighing the Risk of Vaccines versus Disease”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Polio Vaccines
Polio and other vaccines have been thrust into the spotlight with a New York Times report on December 13th that was updated on the 15th by reporters Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg revealing that an attorney working with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had petitioned the government to revoke (or suspend) the FDA’s approval ofContinue reading “The Polio Vaccines”
Why get Vaccinated and How do Vaccines Work?
Other than sanitation (especially clean water, proper food handling, and reducing human exposure to rodents), I cannot think of anything that has done more to reduce childhood mortality, relieve human suffering and extend human life expectancy than vaccines. What is a vaccine? In general, a vaccine is something given by mouth (e.g., polio vaccine), intranasallyContinue reading “Why get Vaccinated and How do Vaccines Work?”
Responding to a Potential Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) Pandemic – Vaccines
I am often asked whether our seasonal flu vaccines could be used to prevent avian influenza (bird flu) infections, and if not, how long would it take to produce and distribute bird flu vaccines. I’ll try to answer both questions in this blog post. The U.S. government has stored some H5N1 vaccines made in theContinue reading “Responding to a Potential Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) Pandemic – Vaccines”
Bird Flu – So many lessons that you would think we should have just learned, but apparently, we did not
My co-author and I wrote a book https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12896/preparing-next-global-outbreak to capture the learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic because we were convinced that it did not serve as the wake-up call that it should have and that memories would be short-lived. In fact, we saw how the global outbreak of MPox shocked the world in 2022 –Continue reading “Bird Flu – So many lessons that you would think we should have just learned, but apparently, we did not”
Addressing the Current Vaccine Disinformation
Let’s get a few matters out of the way before we dive in. Okay, with that out of the way, let’s dive in. I can’t possibly address all the lies and disinformation being spread out there, but let’s take some of the big ones, and then I may tackle some of the other ones inContinue reading “Addressing the Current Vaccine Disinformation”
Understanding Influenza – Part II
There are four types of influenza viruses – A, B, C and D. Types A and B are responsible for the annual influenza epidemics that occur in humans, and type A viruses are the only influenza viruses known to cause pandemics. The general requirement for an influenza virus to cause a pandemic is for theContinue reading “Understanding Influenza – Part II”
More on my Update on Avian Influenza from yesterday
In my post last night on avian influenza, I mentioned a recently published article (yesterday) that I thought should give us pause about many of the assumptions being made about the current H5N1 outbreak in dairy cattle, and that should cause us to increase and improve our response to containing this outbreak. Today, we willContinue reading “More on my Update on Avian Influenza from yesterday”
Update on Avian Influenza (H5N1) Outbreak in US.
In my last update, I expressed concern that something has changed (for the worse) with this virus. We were seeing a change in virulence to cattle in California with prior reports of case fatality rates in infected dairy cattle being 1 – 2%, but in California herds, the case fatality rates were being reported inContinue reading “Update on Avian Influenza (H5N1) Outbreak in US.”
Understanding Influenza – Part I
How Does the CDC conduct influenza surveillance? Are we seeing an increase in influenza activity yet? Is it time to get my flu shot? How Does the CDC conduct influenza surveillance? First, there is virologic surveillance, i.e., testing by a network of laboratories for the influenza virus and reporting to the CDC of those results.Continue reading “Understanding Influenza – Part I”
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