And Texas Caves In

ExxWhy wrote:

BCSnob wrote:

ExxWhy wrote:
OK, you guys win. A vaccine that is 30-50% effective is still called a vaccine. I freely give you both sides of that split hair. I will reserve the right to say it is a crappy vaccine. :)

Go read about the research to develop a Universal Influenza Vaccine by Dr Fauci’s government institute.

That would be an improvement and the stated goal is to be 75% effective. 2 years ago it entered phase 2 trials. Unfortunately, the article has not been updated in 7 months.

BiondVax’s M-001 vaccine—the furthest along in the pipeline toward a universal flu vaccine—contains no viruses, dead or alive; rather, it is a peptide vaccine. It contains nine, highly conserved viral epitopes, those parts of an antigen recognized by the immune system, that are common to 40,000 influenza viruses listed in a National Institutes of Health database, Ben-Yedidia tells The Scientist. These epitopes come from three different viral proteins: M1 (a matrix protein that lines the viral envelope), NP (a nucleoprotein that wraps around the viral RNA), and conserved parts of the hemagglutinin head.

It’s only with a Phase 3 trial that researchers can examine how well a vaccine protects against influenza. In August, BiondVax launched such a study of M-001 in Eastern Europe with the goal of recruiting about 10,000 participants in two cohorts. The first group will be monitored for two flu seasons—this year’s and next year’s—while the second group will be tracked for one flu season, and the results are expected in late 2020. Volunteers will receive two doses of M-001 or a placebo about three weeks apart. Afterward, the investigators will monitor subjects for any influenza-like illness and compare the number of flu cases in each group.