Not familar with this term, but I suspect it would involve formulating
a vaccine with all the known viral H (hemaglutanin) proteins in it,
such that those immunize would have antibodies that would be (cross)
reactive with any arising strain of influenza. The idea is that it
wouldn't necessarily keep you from getting influenza (should one arise
with mutations in it), but it would probably lessen the severity of the
disease. The viral H protein is the principal target of vaccination
because it is what the virus uses to bind to cells that are to be
infected. A "neutralizing" antibody binds to the H protein, thus
blocking the virus' ability to bind to the cell, thus protecting the
cell (and the person) from infection.

johngohde@naturalhealthpe rspective.com wrote:

A lie is an untruth with the intent to deceive. Can you provide the
evidence that I'm trying to deceive you? You asked for a date and I
stated that no one has the answer. How is this a lie?

My problem is that I have a hard time understanding how people can deny
evidence that is right before their eyes. Is there anything in my post
that is factually untrue? If so, I'll gladly issue a correction or
clarification. And what's with the name-calling?

"Science Geeks" at LSU quite accurately predicted the consequences of a
severe hurricane striking the coast near New Orleans.  Some of this
modelling and prediction was described in Scientific American in 2001,
as well as in a number of journals.

However, they didn't give a date for the event.  According to you, that
makes them liars and their predictions a hot air balloon.  Clearly
there are many other people like you, some of them in power, who would
rather pretend nothing bad can happen if they refuse to believe it can,
or if it does, it's okay because it will happen to other people.

The real world isn't affected by what you believe or want or assert.
It just is.  That's the advantage of scientific thinking, for all its
flaws, over the magical thinking you espouse.

I can confidently predict that you are going to die.  Just because I
can't put a date on it doesn't make it a lie or a hot air balloon.  If
you can only deal with the uncertainties in life by a policy of
irrational denial,

(Note -- I'm not saying that a severe influenza pandemic is imminent.
It's extremely likely that there will be one at some time, if not from
a mutated form of the current panzootic avian flu, then from another
one.  Nobody can predict when.  If such a pandemic is averted or mitigated,
it will be by people who take the possibility seriously, not by jackasses
like gohde, who believe that wishing will make it so.

One can also point out that when strenuous efforts avert or mitigate a
potential disaster, as with the Y2K problem or SARS, and as could have
happened, but didn't, with Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, jackasses
like gohde will use it as proof that it was all a bunch of lies and a big
scam, and all those efforts were unnecessary, because the Bad Thing didn't
happen after all.  It's this defective understanding of cause and effect
that's such a serious problem, and there's a lot of it going around.)

That is a big problem, but perhaps (crossing one's fingers) if a human
form does arise it will be more amenable to the avian embryo
technique.  If not, rational deployment of what vaccine can be produced
could slow the spread of a pandemic, giving time to produce more
vaccine.

I'm pretty pessimistic, though, that if a human form develops and a
vaccine is produced, it will be used on people in affected areas to
slow or stop a pandemic, rather than stockpiled for sale to people
elsewhere who can afford to pay for it.

As for cost and capacity, the US is making itself into a third world
country by third world activities like spending itself into extreme
debt on military adventurism, to the point where, like a third world
country, it can't provide disaster relief to its own citizens.  Look at
New Orleans -- the helicopters that should have been there to rescue
people stranded by flooding, and the national guard that should have
been providing order and organization had been taken out of the
domestic emergency system and used to support aggression in Iraq.
People paid for those emergency systems with their taxes, and as in any
corrupt third world country, the money was grafted into the military
and the pockets of the wealthy.

It would be really nice if a fraction of the billions being used to
kill people in Iraq and Afghanistan could be diverted to international
efforts of pandemic preparedness.  It's too much to expect that they
be used to avert tens of millions of preventable deaths from other
causes in poor countries, but it would be in the self-interest of the
US to avert or mitigate the effects of a pandemic among its own
citizens.  This assumes, of course, that there's still some belief that
tax money should be used for the benefit of the general population, an
increasingly dubious assumption.

How much capacity to produce cell-culture vaccine could you build with
startup capital of a billion dollars a year?  Even if you never use
it, it would be no more, and in most respects less of a waste than the
same funds now spent by the military to give more and more Iraqis and
Afghanis good reason to engage in terrorism.

Per ziggittes@yahoo.com:

?