Universal Flu Vaccine: Panacea or Pointless?
News is excitedly breaking across mainstream media, describing a likely to be, forthcoming “Universal Flu Vaccine”. Using the same technology behind the mRNA Covid injections, scientists have designed a prototype they say will “work” against the 20 known types of flu that cause pandemics, and possibly more. Thus far, the means for determining potential efficacy lie in measuring antibody responses to different flu strains in mice and ferrets when given the new shot.
Putting aside the very real question of whether or not efficacy in mice and ferrets will cross over to humans, a big question remains for me:
Why do humans continually make decisions as though they are above nature rather than part of nature?
Soon after the rollout of the covid vaccines, seasoned vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche desperately began trying to communicate with the WHO, CDC, and any other large health agency, in order to tell them his concerns about this rollout. His chief concern was simple and logical- Vaccinate without using products that induce sterilizing immunity and you will create a leaky vaccine that helps train the virus to mutate in ways that work around its effects. This phenomenon is of particular concern if the vaccine is rolled out during times of high viral activity, as in the last nearly 3 years. A brief look around the Omicron waves shows plenty of evidence his predictions may be accurate, so much so, he tried again to contact the WHO.
It is uncertain that this new universal flu vaccine will bring with it similar concerns from Geert, as not all the strains of flu will be circulating during its use, subsequently putting less pressure on them to mutate. However, whether or not these issues arise, or whether or not other unforeseen issues arise, two things are certain:
Respiratory viruses, while not living, can be looked at as having a fairly straightforward goal- They ‘want’ to get into your tissues, replicate, then have you spread them to others who will do the same. If you try to do something to stop that, mutations may occur that happen to do a good job of working around that blockade. In other words, they don’t just quit and go home (Remember the change from “fully vaccinated” to “up to date”?). This is underlies the issue I alluded to of humans behaving as though they are above nature. As we hastily put together new technologies meant to control nature, the smart money is on billions of years of evolution, with little evidence to the contrary, in any arena. Whether or not we can do this with a respiratory virus, a class of virus notoriously difficult to control, remains very much to be seen.
Health related issues of any kind tend to recur if the underlying cause of the problem is not adequately addressed.
The remainder of this article will focus a bit more on #2. If you’d like to learn more about #1, please go to links above and listen to what Dr. Vanden Bossche has to say.
Supply, Demand, and the Impacts of Health
Any new product, including vaccines, requires one primary thing to be financially successful:
Demand.
A fairly strong argument can be made that the covid pandemic, with millions of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, presented quite a high “demand” for the vaccines created to combat it, so it was no surprise they have done so well, at least financially (not to look past the added effect of the coercive tactics utilized by so many countries). The supply, as we are all well aware by now, soon followed in droves.
However, the question too few in the public are asking, and too few in the government are discussing is what created this demand? It might seem like there is a simple answer:
The virus (duh).
However, please allow for the possibility it may be more complicated than that. Before you answer that question, please consider some other questions first:
Do all ages of people have the same demand (ie are all people at equal risk for harm from the vaccines)? If not, why not?
Do all people in more vulnerable groups have the same demand (ie, again, are all people at equal risk for harm from the vaccines)? If not, why not?
Is there anything we could have done to lower demand (ie to reduce our vulnerability to infection and/or severe disease and/or to treat it once it began)? If so, why didn’t we also use those, and would that affect demand for vaccines?
While millions of people died around the world, many, many, many more got through the illness with little difficulty. What was different about them?
Now here’s an even more important question- What do all of the questions above have in common?
It’s actually the simplest answer of all: YOU.
In other words, who you are and everything about you from your current level of health, to your age, your sex, your job, your home life, your social life, your ancestors, your hobbies, your diet, how you sleep, how you move, medications you are on, supplements you take, what treatments you may have taken (if available), and a variety of additional seen and unseen, known and unknown factors go into making you you, and some combination of them may also very well have a huge impact on your vulnerability to infection and severe disease from this virus, and all the others.
Thought about in this way, it becomes downright maddening to consider the fact that essentially NONE of these things have been so much as mentioned during the countless covid-related public statements, tweets, commercials, news segments, etc we have all been exposed to since this all started.
The only thing I’m left to imagine is what it could all have been like had our health authorities put the time, money, and effort they did into promoting hiding, disinfecting, and injecting, instead into supporting and optimizing your inherent capacity for health and resiliency.
And now, after all that; after all these missed opportunities, our next solution to the next potential issue is just another shot? I start to ask myself, how have we not learned anything? But then, I stop and instead have to ask why does it seem these authorities don’t want us to learn?
That is a HUGE question, with essentially unobtainable answers beyond speculation, so it’s best to focus on something more productive. The challenge is, it’s in your hands. You are the one who is in charge of your health and you are the one who can give yourself the best chance to do well when faced with the next flu virus. There are countless options to use to help unleash the most resilient version of yourself possible. Unfortunately, however, you just can’t depend on the government officials tasked with helping keep you well, whose salaries you pay, to actually tell you about them.
The new way is here, however, but I hesitate in calling it that. It’s really the old way, or better yet, the only way there has ever been. You and your immune system are endowed with an inherent wisdom that is millions of years in the making, a product of an unimaginable number of trials and errors. Properly supported, its capabilities are more than you could have ever imagined.
As I stated once already, a truth in health is that illnesses of any kind tend to recur or go unresolved if the underlying cause of the problem is not adequately addressed, and hyper-focusing on the virus, the ‘enemy’, will not be enough to win the battle for you, and may not only just lead to nastier enemies, but it may make you more vulnerable to harm as time goes on. Instead, look to ways to train and support the powerful forces inside of you and to prepare them for whatever challenges lie ahead. You are strong, and, believe it or not, you know how to fight.
You may just have been convinced otherwise.