Immunizations While Runny Nose (Influenza vaccines)
  Understanding the concept of immunization means that it will involve flu shot or vaccination. Influenza vaccines themselves are a remarkable product of cooperation among physicians, governmental agencies and pharmaceutical companies. Manufacturing them in com on flu variants, an international network of nearly 100 surveillance stations, organized under the United Nations’ World Health Organization, provides periodic reports on virus types circulating in each station’s area.
Reports are funneled into centers in London and Atlanta, and these two facilities prepare samples of the dominant influenza strains for each coming influenza season. The samples are distributed to national health services throughout the world; in the United States, for example, the Surgeon General, advised by a panel of flu experts, decides which flu subtypes will he used in commercial vaccines. Actually many people advise against immunizations while runny nose is still happening.
In 1953, to standardize identification of flu, the World Health Organization adopted an international system for naming strains and variants. The first recognized influenza strain, the one that prevailed from 1918 to 1957, is tagged H1N1 (for hemagglutinin antigenic type number 1 paired with neuraminidase antigenic type number 1); its variants are specified by the first city or country in which each was found, together with the date of discovery. Thus, H1N1 are to some extent related variants of the first strain identified under the system. But the H2N2, which also surfaced in 1957, was a different strain.
As it happened, H2N2 was a strain that epidemiologists around the world immediately suspected as a potential troublemaker, They were right: Asian flu, as it came to be known, broke out in China and rapidly swept through Japan, South America, Europe, Africa and the United States.
The mortality rate of Asian flu never approached that of the 1918 flu, perhaps because vaccines reduced the number of susceptible people. The process of getting the vaccines ready is deliberately a last-minute affair, or as much as all concerned dare to make it: The longer the decision makers can wait to assess the influenza scene, the more precisely commercial quantities is like manufacturing automobiles—new models come out every year.
The reason for this constant updating, of course, is the continual drift and shift of influenza virus types, and the consequent need to match new vaccines to dominant flu viruses. That is why you should not have immunizations while runny nose is occuring. To provide manufacturers with the very latest information the selected vaccine will match the actual virus. Yet vaccine production remains a tricky business, requiring a long sequence of steps that can be hurried only so much. In the United States, for example, the final decisions that determine the autumn vaccine formula are usually made around the first of March.
For these complex decisions, the vaccine panel draws not only upon the past year’s data, but also on fragmentary, raw reports of the flu season that is just beginning in the Southern Hemisphere, submitted by stations in such far-flung places as Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Johannesburg.
By late spring, samples of concentrated vaccine are ready. If the vaccine meets standards for safety and effectiveness, the government grants the manufacturer approval to go into mass production and distribution.
Substantial quantities of the government-approved vaccines generally become available in September. In years when nothing more than the usual antigenic drift has taken place, the process is fairly orderly. But in those occasional years when a major shift is anticipated the 1976 scare over the strain called swine flu is a notable example the “warmobilization” effort involved can overwhelm all parts of the system. In 1976 the scare proved unwarranted: The shifted virus that epidemiologists thought was coming turned out to be an abortive strain, which died out before it had a chance to do any serious damage.
Preparation for the pandemic that never arrived was not entirely wasted effort. In the United States it excited public concern over the long-term problems of influenza, and it generated a number of changes in the vaccination program. Flu immunization for high-risk groups is now a recognized vaccination program, assuming its place alongside immunization efforts against polio, measles, diphtheria, German measles and other diseases.
The great swine-flu scare also prompted a harder look at reporting and testing systems to see if the time between startup and delivery of licensed vaccines could be shortened. And finally, it promoted research into alternatives and reinforcements to vaccines, promising better protection against this disease in the future. So we strongly recommend the vaccine and never to have immunizations while runny nose. |
