Bird flu study

They've emailed me all the information about the new study I'm about to subject myself to. Cripes, it's pages and pages. Most of it's just the usual standard things they have to put in there about privacy and your rights and all, but it's quite interesting some of the info about the particular study itself.

It's pretty much about studying the bird flu in case it starts getting passed from human to human instead of just bird to human, as humans wouldn't have a prepared immune response to something that had previously only been passed from bird to bird. 

This is a small part of the info:

People are being exposed to different human influenza viruses since their childhood. This means that their immune system already recognises these types of virus. Because the influenza virus can change into different human types which can resist the body’s defences, scientists constantly study the circulating influenza viruses to make sure that the vaccines produced each year include the right ‘ingredients’ to protect against the main influenza types present for that year. 

But if a non-human influenza virus type changes and becomes able to spread from human to human, the immune system of most of the people would not recognise it at all, and would be unable to fight off the virus before the disease becomes serious. To be prepared for a future pandemic it is important that studies with vaccines prepared from viruses that may be responsible for pandemics are carried out. 

Because a suitable vaccine may be produced and distributed only after the virus type causing the infection is identified, there will be in the early stages of a pandemic a lag time when the vaccine will not be available for distribution. Hence, public health authorities are stockpiling vaccines prepared from a virus which might cause a pandemic in advance of a possible pandemic in order to reduce delays in immunizing people at risk. Additionally, vaccination with a vaccine prepared from a virus which might cause a pandemic (pre-pandemic vaccination) could help the immune system to fight off the virus in case the disease is caused by the same or by a similar virus strain.  

I thought the bird flu was all over and done with, but apparently not. It must mutate in birds every year.