Re:Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things ...
by snowwrestler on Thursday January 22, 2015 @02:52PM
(#8931319)
I think one aspect of disease management that the CDC probably (I don't have direct proof) cares about more than most is logistics. Specifically, the companies and processes needed to produce and distribute flu vaccines and drugs in volumes sufficient for national response.
This sort of infrastructure is very expensive and time-consuming to create--way longer than a flu strain takes to propagate, or an individual vaccine takes to formulate.
In the back of everyone's mind is the 1918 flu, and the possibility for a similarly deadly (or more deadly) version to develop today. It's possible and essentially unpredictable. If it were to happen, we would need to have that vaccine/drug infrastructure ready to go.
So: get your flu vaccine every year, even though it might not be super effective. Take Tamiflu even though it might not help much with a typical flu. Why? To keep those businesses and factories around for another year, in case we really need them.
This sort of infrastructure is very expensive and time-consuming to create--way longer than a flu strain takes to propagate, or an individual vaccine takes to formulate.
In the back of everyone's mind is the 1918 flu, and the possibility for a similarly deadly (or more deadly) version to develop today. It's possible and essentially unpredictable. If it were to happen, we would need to have that vaccine/drug infrastructure ready to go.
So: get your flu vaccine every year, even though it might not be super effective. Take Tamiflu even though it might not help much with a typical flu. Why? To keep those businesses and factories around for another year, in case we really need them.