The plan is to modernize the yearly flu shots by using the Novavax method of culturing the virus proteins. The traditional method uses eggs and takes many months. This leads to prediction errors that make the shots less effective. OTOH the updated flu shots are expected to be over 90% effective.
Or at least this is what was told to me by a guy who’s a volunteer in a vaccine study group. He said this is what the doctors who are overseeing the study had said. It’s third hand info so take with a grain of salt but it seems believable.
The problem that is emerging with COVID and influenza vaccination is theoretical, not practical.
Repeated exposures to influenza A proteins via vaccination have to be summed with your natural exposures, and your previous infections (and, probably the genetics of your IR genes) to predict the outcome.
So, population-wide, or even world-wide, assertions about whether the “flu shot” is good for you, bad for you, or has no effect are all going to fail, at some point in time.
The human immune system is designed to react to several billion foreign proteins, and your “library” is constantly being updated by breathing the air, eating food, drinking liquids, and intimate behavior.
Props to vaccine science: Life expectancy is now around 70, not 30. IN GENERAL, vaccines have promoted positive evolution of the GENERAL human immune system’s response to SOME of the pathogens they are designed to eliminate.
But these generalities do not address what is good for a single person, with their own individual exposure history and genetic makeup.