full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Seth Berkley: HIV and flu -- the vaccine strategy

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Well, we first figured out how to make flu vaccines, how to produce them, in the early 1940s. It was a slow, cumbersome process that depended on chicken eggs, millions of lnivig chicken eggs. Viruses only grow in living things, and so it turned out that, for flu, chicken eggs worked really well. For most strains, you could get one to two doses of vaccine per egg. Luckily for us, we live in an era of breathtaking bcdeaiimol advances. So today, we get our flu vaccines from ... ckceihn eggs, (lhgtuear) hundreds of millions of chicken eggs. Almost nothing has changed. The system is reliable but the problem is you never know how well a strain is going to grow. This year's swine flu strain grew very poorly in early production: basically .6 doses per egg. So, here's an alarming thought. What if that wild bird flies by again? You could see an avian strain that would infect the portuly flocks, and then we would have no eggs for our vineccas. So, Dan [barebr], if you want billions of chicken pleelts for your fish farm, I know where to get them. So right now, the wolrd can produce about 350 million doses of flu vaccine for the three strains, and we can up that to about 1.2 billion doses if we want to tregat a sginle variant like swine flu. But this assumes that our factories are humming because, in 2004, the U.S. supply was cut in half by cntoaiiamontn at one single plant. And the peosrcs still taeks more than half a year.

Open Cloze

Well, we first figured out how to make flu vaccines, how to produce them, in the early 1940s. It was a slow, cumbersome process that depended on chicken eggs, millions of ______ chicken eggs. Viruses only grow in living things, and so it turned out that, for flu, chicken eggs worked really well. For most strains, you could get one to two doses of vaccine per egg. Luckily for us, we live in an era of breathtaking __________ advances. So today, we get our flu vaccines from ... _______ eggs, (________) hundreds of millions of chicken eggs. Almost nothing has changed. The system is reliable but the problem is you never know how well a strain is going to grow. This year's swine flu strain grew very poorly in early production: basically .6 doses per egg. So, here's an alarming thought. What if that wild bird flies by again? You could see an avian strain that would infect the _______ flocks, and then we would have no eggs for our ________. So, Dan [______], if you want billions of chicken _______ for your fish farm, I know where to get them. So right now, the _____ can produce about 350 million doses of flu vaccine for the three strains, and we can up that to about 1.2 billion doses if we want to ______ a ______ variant like swine flu. But this assumes that our factories are humming because, in 2004, the U.S. supply was cut in half by _____________ at one single plant. And the _______ still _____ more than half a year.

Solution

  1. target
  2. single
  3. barber
  4. poultry
  5. process
  6. world
  7. vaccines
  8. laughter
  9. biomedical
  10. takes
  11. contamination
  12. living
  13. chicken
  14. pellets

Original Text

Well, we first figured out how to make flu vaccines, how to produce them, in the early 1940s. It was a slow, cumbersome process that depended on chicken eggs, millions of living chicken eggs. Viruses only grow in living things, and so it turned out that, for flu, chicken eggs worked really well. For most strains, you could get one to two doses of vaccine per egg. Luckily for us, we live in an era of breathtaking biomedical advances. So today, we get our flu vaccines from ... chicken eggs, (Laughter) hundreds of millions of chicken eggs. Almost nothing has changed. The system is reliable but the problem is you never know how well a strain is going to grow. This year's swine flu strain grew very poorly in early production: basically .6 doses per egg. So, here's an alarming thought. What if that wild bird flies by again? You could see an avian strain that would infect the poultry flocks, and then we would have no eggs for our vaccines. So, Dan [Barber], if you want billions of chicken pellets for your fish farm, I know where to get them. So right now, the world can produce about 350 million doses of flu vaccine for the three strains, and we can up that to about 1.2 billion doses if we want to target a single variant like swine flu. But this assumes that our factories are humming because, in 2004, the U.S. supply was cut in half by contamination at one single plant. And the process still takes more than half a year.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
immune system 4
million people 3
vaccines work 3
hiv vaccine 3
flu virus 3
flu vaccine 3
chicken eggs 3
flu pandemic 2
death sentence 2
united states 2
infectious diseases 2
memory cells 2
hiv infected 2
wild bird 2
broadly neutralizing 2
neutralizing antibodies 2
virus mutates 2
vaccine design 2
universal flu 2
million doses 2
swine flu 2
entire world 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
broadly neutralizing antibodies 2

Important Words

  1. advances
  2. alarming
  3. assumes
  4. avian
  5. barber
  6. basically
  7. billion
  8. billions
  9. biomedical
  10. bird
  11. breathtaking
  12. changed
  13. chicken
  14. contamination
  15. cumbersome
  16. cut
  17. dan
  18. depended
  19. doses
  20. early
  21. egg
  22. eggs
  23. era
  24. factories
  25. farm
  26. figured
  27. fish
  28. flies
  29. flocks
  30. flu
  31. grew
  32. grow
  33. humming
  34. hundreds
  35. infect
  36. laughter
  37. live
  38. living
  39. luckily
  40. million
  41. millions
  42. pellets
  43. plant
  44. poorly
  45. poultry
  46. problem
  47. process
  48. produce
  49. reliable
  50. single
  51. slow
  52. strain
  53. strains
  54. supply
  55. swine
  56. system
  57. takes
  58. target
  59. thought
  60. today
  61. turned
  62. vaccine
  63. vaccines
  64. variant
  65. viruses
  66. wild
  67. worked
  68. world
  69. year