So, we've said that the immune system can learn to recognize pathogens, and that a vaccine teaches the immune system to recognize a pathogen (If you don't remember how or why, see the previous post.) If that's the case, why do we need a vaccine for the flu every year?
It turns out that the flu virus is prone to mutation. This year's flu virus doesn't quite look like last year's virus. The change is enough that even if the immune system will recognize last year's virus (either from a vaccine or from getting the actual illness), it probably won't recognize this year's flu virus. So even if we got last year's vaccine, we need this year's to be protected this year.
Next: aren’t there problems with the flu vaccine?
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