foothead
Omnicide now.
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That's exactly what I'm implying. It's a stretch... I know, but I fail to see a virus that mutates just outside of our built up immunity every 365 days and the pharmaceutical company coming to our rescue just in time, every single year. Do new variations of this virus have a hangout they know about and just wait outside for the new mutation to start processing it's vaccine? How do they get a hold of the 'next big cold' the same time every year?
Influenza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This explains it fairly well.
In short: influenza is an RNA-based virus, which causes it to have a very high mutation rate. It's always changing. The reason it seems to pop up every year in a different strain is because it's only really communicable during certain seasons. Then it has the rest of the year to just keep changing. The CDC basically monitors the most common mutations and decides which one is the most likely to become widespread, and that's what they focus on creating a vaccination for.