Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are slated to deliver new single-strain Covid shots targeting the omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 in September.
I’ll probably get it when I get my flu shot but the messaging and communication isn’t great
I’m actually a little surprised there isn’t a combined influenza/covid vaccine, unless there’s a storage or incompatible carrier issue I’m not aware of (immunology is not my field, so this is entirely possible). As an independent consultant, getting sick pulls money out of my pocket, and being down a week due to flu can cost me $5k or more in income. Plus, I don’t want any of the exciting long term complications, even if rare, from a bout with Covid. I say stick me with a needle and slap my ass on the way out the door.
Current COVID vaccines are mRNA, which is unstable and needs -80⁰C storage. And while there are protein-based vaccines, mRNA are easier to update. So I think we’ll keep getting those while the virus is evolving rapidly.
They don’t all need ultra low temperatures anymore
Moderna can be as warm as -15c
This doesn’t have em all, but it shows they’ve gotten better than the initial ultra low temp requirements.
Good news. Thanks. Still colder than flu but freezers are widespread.
Yeah. Basically, when they were making the vaccines, they were like, Okay, we don’t know exactly how warm we can successfully store them at and have them remain good. But we definitively know that if we store them at this incredibly good temperature, it’ll stay good. Rather than have people dying while we play around with variables when we don’t need to, we’ll just do things at the temperatures we know are good, and we’ll research and figure out the warmer temperatures later on.. And now it’s later on, so …
IMO, if they’re going to make a push for it to be an annual thing, it would be a good idea if the shot were available before school starts in the fall.
Given that all covid vaccines have lost most of their efficacy in just a few months, once a year doesn’t seem like enough.
They want you to be the most protected during winter.
This is true, but we also know that kids are a disease vector that especially kicks in after every break, and that adults seem to be more vulnerable than kids.
Messaging on this would suck, but I’d love to see split vaccinations, with kids getting vaccinated in late August. That way, they’re less likely to vector the disease and we might tamp down the winter surge, and their ‘prime’ resistance would run through Christmas. And adults getting vaccinated at the end of October, with their ‘prime’ resistance running from just before Thanksgiving through the end of the winter heating season.
That sounds like a really cool thing to try and model and then try all sorts of variations on.
Probably a masters thesis or something in there if someone wanted to do it.
