The H1N1 Virus

So as not to give you the wrong idea, I'm not banging on the government.. yet.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the US will only have about half of the vaccine it needs by October to battle the H1N1 - Mexican flu virus - because "it takes a long time to create using the chicken egg method.

I happen to know about a company that has a new way to produce this and other vaccines without using chicken eggs that is a lot faster. It's call Vaccine Like Particle - VLP and you can read about it on their website. I've been following them for a few years now. And they do produce other flu vaccines that are in use currently.

The company is Novavax (NVAX)

The first paragraph from the H1N1 section as follows:

Development of a Virus-Like Particle (VLP) Vaccine Against the Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus in 12 Weeks or Less
A novel influenza A (H1N1) virus was first detected in April 2009 in Mexico, the United States and Canada and has rapidly spread to other countries. This outbreak reflects the urgent need to develop new vaccines rapidly in the early stages of a pandemic and produce them quickly to reduce the spread of the virus and protect public health. Novavax believes that its VLP-vaccine technology has the potential to meet this need and produce a vaccine against the novel influenza A H1N1 in 12 weeks or less.

It is in clinical trials but a Spanish company, ROVI has licensed the technology to create vaccine for the entire country of Spain based on acceptance by the Spanish government -

Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX) announced today its initial
agreement to license its proprietary, recombinant virus-like-particle (VLP) vaccine technology to ROVI Pharmaceuticals (Madrid: ROVI) of Spain. ROVI will use the VLP technology to create a comprehensive influenza vaccine solution for the Spanish government under a new 60 millioneuro program sponsored and led by the Spanish Ministry of Health and other government groups to develop pandemic and seasonal flu vaccines and establish its only in-border facility. This program, which was announced today by Spanish health officials, is being launched to develop safe and effective flu vaccines to serve the entire population of Spain.

Just a heads up in case you invest or trade in stocks, as this may provide a short term opportunity at least, and also in case we all start fallling like flies this fall, (As Flu Viruses First Noticed in the Spring Come Back Like GangBusters in the Fall - See Spanish Flu for example) we may have to have another round of Town Hall Meetings and Tea Parties (wearing masks of course) to Stir the White House and the Democrat Congress into action since them suckers are in an evil world of their own design and H1N1 probably isn't even on their radar yet.