Ruminations of Old Geezers - More on a Confusing Read

Comparing avian influenza thingybobs

Old geezers do not like confusion, they don’t like duplication - are a bit grumpy - but love a twisty-turny story. Well, we certainly got one in our efforts to understand what is going on with vaccines against avian influenza. 

Summary of the UKHSA and MHRA information received about the H5 Avian Influenza Vaccine.

Note our refusal to use the f word in this piece, we will give you an additional reason at the end of the post.

As far as we can make out, this is the current situation regarding avian influenza vaccines licensed in the EU:

This is where you can find more for each of these vaccines from the European Medicines Agency:

• Aflunov Summary of Product Characteristics

• Celldemic Summary of Product Characteristics

• Incellipan Summary of Product Characteristics

• Zoonotic influenza vaccine (H5N8) (surface antigen, inactivated, adjuvanted) Summary of product characteristics

We have tabulated the characteristics extracted from each Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) for your convenience. At first glance it all seems very strange. 

The first three vaccines are virtually identical, apart from different antigenic strains, which are changeable as new strains are isolated. Two have a permanent licence, while Incellipan has a conditional marketing authorisation. We are at a loss to explain why this difference exists, unless Incellipan is a pre-pandemic vaccine. Its rather vague indication would support this interpretation: “Active immunisation against influenza in an officially declared pandemic.”

The fourth vaccine, the Zoonotic nameless, has a full licence and is the one that UKHSA bought. The wording of the indications for the last two is interesting as they can be used for any combination of antigenic presentations. This would explain the “H5 tag” in the UKHSA announcement for the nameless zoonotic. 

Why have three identical products: Aflunov, Celldemic, and Incellipan are all H5N1 products. However, when you look at the indications, they differ. Inclelipan is “Active immunisation against influenza in an officially declared pandemic.” Aflunov and Celldemic are “Active immunisation against H5N1 subtype of Influenza A virus in individuals 6 months of age and above.“

Zoonotic Influenza Vaccine is a H5N8 vaccine with an indication for “Active immunisation against H5 subtype influenza A viruses in adults 18 years of age and above.” 

To say we are confused is an underestimate.  Why license this variety of vaccines when the threat is low to non-existent?  Why spend the money this way? We’d also like to know who is responsible for the spending and the decision-making regarding what to stockpile. However, don’t ask how much has been spent; we’ve tried to find out and have failed. Why is there such a mystery and refusal to answer questions through the FOIA? Moreover, what are we missing?

Scroll down to cross reactive immunity, and you get the distinct feeling that the regulators have no idea what the immune correlates are and do not think an H5N1 product will protect you against other avian subtypes. This makes the whole thing appear very very strange, surreal or something else.

What is reported about Cross-reactive immunity 

Now to the mainstream media. A recent piece in the Mail contained the usual mix of wrong information and misleading statements about the actions of the US Secretary of State for Health, RFK Jr. 

Kenndey halted a US$ 590 million subsidy to Moderna to develop an mmRNA avian influenza vaccine with the exact technological blueprint as the Covid-19 vaccines, hardly a glowing recommendation as we have seen. This is on top of another £179 million already awarded by the Biden administration in 2024 for the same reason. Leaving aside animal vaccines for now, we do not understand what this plethora of avian influenza vaccines is supposed to achieve, remembering the vagueness of the threat and the fact that modellers have mainly promoted it over the last 20 years.

There’s more. We are highly bothered by the frequent use of the f word “flu” in most of the official communications we have read. 

If you take the colloquial term “flu” to mean ILI, then you are a long way towards raising the alarm for the next viral pandemic. Several viral agents are avian born, not just influenza. Slackness of terminology and the absence of a fixed definition of a viral pandemic, which has shifted over the last 2- years to suit the perceived facts and not the other way round, are pointers that we do not like.

We are trying to understand the aim of this pipeline. We remember the signal failure of the lead-up and the facts surrounding the 2009 influenza pandemic, which was hotly predicted, invoked by many and fizzled out after a few months. We remember the catastrophic introduction of Pandemrix. Its efficacy is unknown, and its neurotoxicity is quickly forgotten. We are puzzled. Has anyone a reasonable explanation?

Two confused old geezers who are most concerned wrote this post.