Originally posted by pal666
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As for influenza viruses and vaccines, there are multiple strains that differ enough they need to be individually targeted by the vaccine. The vaccines do not target all strains, and which strains dominate varies year-by-year. This is probably one reason the vaccine needs to be re-formulated each year. The other consideration is that influenza has two primary mechanisms by which mutations are introduced, whereas SARS-CoV-2 has only one. This makes influenza mutate much more rapidly than many other viruses. In contrast, I believe there are many vaccines which are not continuously reformulated.
The point being that you really shouldn't try to extrapolate from a single example.
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