Vaccine making is not an easy process.

Each February experts make a decision about what type of flu vaccine to produce for the upcoming season and as you might imagine, this year’s outbreak of A (H1N1) and the production of a swine flu vaccination has disrupted that schedule a bit.

And while seasonal flu vaccine is still being made, it’s hard for the current vaccine producing system to shift gears fast enough, and the technology being used isn’t as modern as we might like.

While the first trial vaccines are expected within a few weeks, it may not be until the end of this year that a fully tested swine flu vaccine is ready according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

An already difficult vaccine production process is made worse by the swine flu viruses being used to develop the vaccine.

It seems they’re only offering half as much “yield” in egg-based production (most of today’s vaccine is made this way) as what manufacturer’s get when creating vaccine for the seasonal flu virus.

U.S. health officials are said to be considering a swine flu immunization program that involves an astonishing 600 million doses. Who will administer the vaccine, and how side effects will be tracked has yet to be determined.

The good news is that swine flu, known officially as A (H1N1), remains a relatively mild illness and the vast majority of patients continue to recover quickly.

The virus is still susceptible to antiviral drugs, including Tamiflu, which makes these medicines ideal as a treatment option for infected patients.

On the down side, research does suggest that A (H1N1) causes more lung damage than the seasonal flu strain.

It’s also important to know that this A (H1N1) strain is able to take the life of the young and previously healthy.

In fact, almost half of those who’ve died worldwide have been just that. By contrast, the seasonal flu is usually most deadly to the very young or the very old.

In a piece on the A (H1N1) flu appearing in the journal Nature, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues took virus samples from patients infected with the A (H1N1) swine flu and looked at how they affected different animals.

In mice, ferrets and monkeys, the A (H1N1) swine flu virus brought on lung conditions that were more severe than seen in the seasonal flu. Researchers think this might explain why A (H1N1) has caused some serious cases of pneumonia in those who were otherwise healthy.

The A (H1N1) swine flu arrived in the U.S. in the middle of April, and estimates have about one million Americans being infected though there are far fewer “confirmed” cases.

There continue to be deaths from the illness.

The Wisconsin researchers also found that A (H1N1) is closely related to the viruses that were behind the devastating 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic. In fact, antibodies taken from those born before 1920 recognize the current swine flu virus, not so for those born after 1920.

What worries health officials today is that the virus we know now might mutate into a more virulent and dangerous illness.

While we continue to wait for a vaccine to arrive, it’s important to look back at the last large-scale government-backed swine flu vaccination campaign in 1976. In hindsight a program that earned mixed reviews.

It was an incredible mobilization of the nations health care system, though a miserable failure after a paralyzing nerve disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome struck 500 (and killed 30) of those who’d been vaccinated.

It wasn’t until December 1976 that federal officials canceled the program, though not before 40 million Americans were inoculated against a pandemic that in the end never materialized.

Perhaps the lessons learned from this, as well as the WHO decree that before a country can start a large-scale swine flu vaccination program the vaccines used need to be checked for safety by regulators, will help future efforts improve on past ones.

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So it appears to me that it is fair to say that we have a partial outbreak of Dog Flu in the United States, the question is, how do we put a stop to it? Aside from prophylaxis (prevention) which we are not even sure we can say we know how to properly administer, what do we do in order to keep ourselves safe from the condition? “There is no evidence that it can infect people,” said Dr. Ruben Donis of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has published a report on the new virus in the journal Science. This said, how can he be sure of this based on the short time that the Canine strain has been prevalent?”

Health experts in the animal field know this strain of virus as an equine strain of flu that has been in circulation for the last 40 years. The troubling question that nobody knows the answer to as of yet is how this flu strain mutated in dogs being what was originally thought of as a specific horse flu?

Being that this is a relatively new strain of flu, health experts can not say for sure if we humans are at risk due to the lack of exposure that we have had to this specific flu strain: however the odds are very unlikely due to the fact that throughout time, not one person has become infected while handling a horse that had the virus.

As a dog owner it is hard to know what to do. Do we shelter our dogs remanding them to a life of indoor living, or do we continue on treating them the same way we do now? Health experts will say to do the latter, however is that their way of trying to defuse the situation, I can not say for sure.

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Because there is currently no definitive vaccine against swine flu there has been some confusion in how the flu is transmitted. Sometimes people make assumptions about transmission based on factors like the speed of spread or number of cases. Of course this is wrong and has no correlation to transmission facts.

Some things are known about the swine flu virus thanks to it sharing other flu’s characteristics, however, many of it’s own idiosyncracies are yet to be determined.

We do know that the pig flu strain can live up to 24 hours on a hard surface and only around 20 minutes on a soft type. The incubation period is unknown but is estimated at 2 to 5 days.

About the Avian Flu Virus

The current Asian outbreak of avian flu, also known as bird flu, is associated with the influenza A strain H5N1 flu virus. Although not the same as the Spanish flu virus that claimed 20 million to 50 million lives worldwide in the 1918 outbreak, the current avian flu strain does share many characteristics with the 1918 strain. Both scientists and governments around the world are studying this threat very closely and some have warned of the potential for another pandemic outbreak. Initial studies have shown that Tamiflu may be effective in helping to fight the effects of this flu virus if the medication is taken very early after flu symptoms appear.

Oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu, is one of several antiviral medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment and prevention of influenza. Flu shots are still the best way to prevent someone from developing the flu, but as of this writing no vaccine is available to protect humans from the avian H5N1 influenza virus. According to the CDC, development of a vaccine has begun.

Tamiflu, which is generically known as oseltamivir, is part of a family of flu fighting medicines called neuraminidase inhibitors. Tamilflu is used in the treatment of viral infections caused by the influenza A and influenza B viruses. This treatment has shown to be effective in fighting these viruses if treatment starts within two days of the onset of flu symptoms. Tamiflu works by blocking the advance of the viral infection and thus giving the body’s immune system a better chance for fighting the virus. Tamiflu can help you get back to being healthy fast

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