Building out cold infrastructure

[nwhiker]

More and more things seem to point to the fact that Covid-19 may become endemic. Which leads to a few questions and observations.

-- Will the J&J vaccine, which can't have a booster (because the immune system will become attuned to the adenovirus as well as to the spike protein) be sufficient, or will people need to move to mRNA vaccines for "updates"/boosters?

-- The advantages of the J&J vaccine, that don't, imo, counteract its much lower effectiveness, are single dose and lack of cold storage requirement. It just needs to be kept at 4c, ie a regular fridge. The cold requirement is the same for the Moderna vaccine, which, however, requires two doses.

-- The flu vaccine mutates quickly so we all need those yearly jabs, which are usually between 40 and 60% effective. But, despite the screamings of the Trumpists of "99.9% survival", this is more serious than the flu and we're going to need vaccine protection.

So.

We will probably need Covid-19 surveillance, like we have flu surveillances, and a new shot or a booster shot every year.

What does this mean for the live (attenuated) virus shots? I don't know, I'm not an expert.

However the mRNA vaccines appear to this lay person to be more nimble, faster to produce and perhaps easier to retool when an emergent strain started to take over.

So.

I think we should, as part of the infrastructure plan that is hopefully going to come out of the Biden admin at some point soon, think about developing a network of cold storage. If we need vaccines every year...