Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   About which part? Date:   5/22/2020 10:01:57 AM

Treatments are not vaccines or about the flu shot?  If you really think a treatment is a vaccince then I can't help you because you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the human body works.  A vaccine or developing your own antibodies by having a disease are the only two ways to prevent getting it.  Treatments lessen the symptoms and in some cases can allow you to be asymptomatic.  This is like 8th grade science class stuff.

From the NIH website:

"A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize it as foreign, destroy it, and ”remember” it, so that the immune system can more easily identify and destroy any of these microorganisms that it encounters later."

"Antibiotics don’t work against viral infections such as colds or the flu. In those cases, antiviral drugs, which fight infection either by inhibiting a virus’s ability to reproduce or by strengthening the body’s immune response to the infection, are used. There are several different classes of drugs in the antiviral family, and each is used for specific kinds of viral infections. (Unlike antibacterial drugs, which may cover a wide spectrum of pathogens, antiviral medications are used to treat a narrower range of organisms.) Antiviral drugs are now available to treat a number of viruses, including influenza, HIV, herpes, and hepatitis B. Like bacteria, viruses mutate over time and develop resistance to antiviral drugs."

Note that antivirals don't prevent getting the disease, they reduce the symptoms by inhibiting viral growth or improving the immune system response.....treatment, not prevention.  And you accuse Trump of not liking to be wrong.

As for the flu shot I don't usually take it because I used to for a number of years and would still get the flu (mostly because I travel a lot).  When I complained to my doctor he told me that the shot is only for prior year strains, many of which don't come back on their own or people who got them are immune so they don't spread as readily.  It doesn't help with new strains that deveop regularly, you know, like the Wuhan virus.  But maybe you know more than my internist who's been practicing for probably 35 years.....I'll ask him when I have my physical in a couple of weeks.  He needs a good laugh.  When I retire and am no longer traveling so much for work I'll probably get the flu shot again.