Thanks for the question, Ryan. I think it will take many years before we can have a “universal” vaccine. Even the companies that are now trying to make one know that they have to go through a long, expensive process of clinical studies and still they may not be able to call their vaccines “universal”. At the moment we do not really know which parts of the flu virus to target to get a broad, long-lasting protection. The current vaccines target the proteins on the surface of the flu and we know that these proteins constantly change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ_jNGKCIWs

And while the scientific community is struggling with these unanswered questions, the influenza virus is doing it’s usual thing — mutate! The flu viruses that normally infect only birds can potentially mutate and have the ability to infect humans.