# InvVax Wefunder campaign closing soon! | InvVax

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- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:172797
- Published at: 2024-04-22 20:05:18 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-09 03:24:49 UTC

## Author
Arthur Young

## Subject
InvVax

## Content
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/17/opinions/bird-flu-pandemic-threat-covid-mammals-yassif/index.htmlIt's shocking to say this, but we could be standing on the precipice of yet another pandemic. Influenza H5N1, a.k.a. "bird flu," normally infects wild birds (such as ducks, geese, etc.) and farmed chickens, but does not normally infect mammals, including humans. However, there have been a couple of outbreaks of H5N1 among humans in the recent past. H5N1 originated in Hong Kong in 1997, and has caused several outbreaks, the biggest of which was in 2003. Altogether, there have been 888 confirmed cases in humans to date, with 463 deaths, for a staggering 52% fatality rate. (In comparison, COVID-19 has had a fatality rate of just under 1%.) I don't want to say that anything can dwarf COVID, but. . . the numbers are the numbers. And as should be obvious, bird flu is airborne transmissible, like COVID. So far public health officials have been relatively nonchalant about bird flu, largely because it is inefficient at infecting mammals/humans, requiring intimate contact between domestic poultry and people. Thus, most of the people who have gotten H5N1 have been poultry workers. It had not yet acquired the ability to pass from mammal-to-mammal, which is what is required for it to be a true threat. . . until now. H5N1 has broken out again, prompting the killing of tens of millions of chickens, and very worringly, a number of cows and goats have also shown up with H5N1. Public health officials believe that most likely cows and goats are passing it to each other, rather than each being independently infected by a chicken. What does that mean? That would mean that the virus is now going from mammal-to-mammal. So far, it's still a mild illness -- the one person who has caught it in this current outbreak has had mild symptoms -- but it may only be a matter of time before it gains the ability to (1) efficiently pass from human-to-human and (2) cause more severe symptoms or even death. This is why public health officials are quite worried about the present H5N1 situation. The U.S. government does have stockpiles of H5N1 vaccines, but they aren't very good, may not work against the present strain(s), and could for all we know be expired.Will the InvVax flu vaccine work against H5N1? It should. Already we have done an experiment in mice, in collaboration with Hong Kong University, comparing the InvVax flu vaccine with the current seasonal flu vaccine (the quadrivalent vaccine), and the InvVax vaccine protected 80% of mice from death with a very high lethal dose of virus, vs. 35% for the seasonal flu shot (for reference's sake, the seasonal flu shot on average protects about 40% of patients from seasonal -- not H5N1 -- flu, and in a good year, 60%). We likely won't get our vaccine out in the market in time to address the present threat. But it's highly worth pushing this as fast as we can, to be prepared for future threats, which may come, as some experts have feared, "not a matter of 'if' but 'when'."As the heading indicates, we are closing very soon! If you would like to invest, or invest more, please click on this link:https://wefunder.com/invvax/ask