This year's flu vaccine doesn't match the dominant strain, but Hensley encourages Americans to get the shot anyway.
Omicron is teaching people about antigenic drift, the process in which viruses change parts of themselves to evade human immune responses, he says.
What’s happening now with omicron happens with the flu every year. This year, there has been a major antigenic drift in the H3N2 variant of the flu, he says.
“Flu is a virus that is constantly changing. It's sort of a master shapeshifter,” Hensley says. “And many times these changes are in the regions of viruses that are specifically targeted by human antibodies.
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