U.S. health officials are bracing for a devastating flu season this winter that many people won’t even be able to ward off with their annual flu shot. The possibility of a “flu-pocalypse” is being talked about after record numbers of patients were diagnosed with influenza in Australia, whose flu season just ended. In a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a group of infectious disease
doctors say that Australia’s vaccination against the flu was only effective 10 percent of the time this year. “What happened is, in the development of the vaccine, as we grow it in eggs, the virus itself mutated a bit, so that there was almost an accidental mismatch purely on the basis of the virus trying to adapt itself to growing in eggs,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told WTOP. “That’s what happened in Australia and it is likely that that’s what we’re going to see here.” READ MORE
