MaverickNH
NES Member
It’s called a flu shot not a flu vaccine...I don’t know why this is being questioned???
I see you’re point - calling it a “Flu Shot” reminds people it’s not a one-and-done thing. But it is an “immunization” that works by amping up your immune system to target the seasonal strain variant(s) that are constantly changing. The “H” and “N” variations make the virus bind to different cells (upper, mid, lower respiratory) More of less efficiently and be able to multiply and flood out of cells to infect new cells more or less efficiently. As there are gazillions of viruses and billions of hosts (birds, pigs, humans) to bounce around in, the HN variants evolve constantly. So the composition of the shot has to be changed constantly. It’s a lot like weather forecasting but way far in advance, so the accuracy isn’t so great. Some viruses don’t vary in ways that can evade our immune system, so those vaccines last as long as our body remembers to make antibodies.
So yeah, we say something works when we’re sick “like a shot in the arm” as a quick but short-term fix. Like the Flue Shot.