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Medical Countermeasures
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The good news is we have the mRNA technology so we'll be able to make a vaccine pretty quickly. The bad news is we'll never be able to make enough vaccine for 350 million people quick enough because we haven't built the redundancy in being able to convert that science to products for the American public. And the bad news is we still haven't built the redundancy for diagnostics.

Robert Redfield, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Scarcity

The history of influenza pandemics is also one of scarcity of medical countermeasures. Stockpiles expire and production capacity can't expand fast enough to meet the sudden demand. Development and testing of vaccines has been a long process.
This time the world is at least better prepared. Scientists are working on flexible mRNA vaccines that are faster to produce than previous vaccines. We can also expect long-lasting antibodies with a broad range in the foreseeable future, providing almost universal influenza protection for months or longer.
While a decade ago there was little hope that the death toll of a H5N1 pandemic could be significantly reduced, we now have the experience from the Covid-19 pandemic and new technologies.

The time required to manufacture both egg-based and cell culture-based influenza vaccines has resulted in “too little, too late” vaccine responses for the 1957, 1968, and 2009 pandemics on a worldwide scale.
Source: Mammalian-Transmissible H5N1 Influenza: Facts and Perspective
The only company with an F.D.A.-approved non-egg-based H5N1 vaccine expects to be able to produce 150 million doses within six months of the declaration of a pandemic. But there are seven billion people in the world.
Source: An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here
In all three pandemics in the twentieth century, the majority of associated deaths occurred 6 months to a year after the pandemic virus first emerged. This suggests that intense and timely surveillance of both age-specific mortality and new influenza viruses could provide sufficient time for production and distribution of vaccines and antivirals to prevent much, if not most, of the mortality impact.
Source: The Story of Influenza
That math is daunting: The 8.1 billion people worldwide times two is 16.2 billion doses. Babies under the age of 6 months aren’t vaccinated against flu — their immune systems aren’t yet sufficiently developed for it to be effective — so that number would be a bit lower. But there’s always waste in vaccine delivery, so the 16 billion probably isn’t far off. (...) So, in theory, 1.2 billion vaccine doses could become 3.6 billion vaccine doses. (...)In a seasonal flu shot, each component contains 15 micrograms of antigen or vaccine. In that study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it took two doses of 90 micrograms — 12 times the amount used to protect against a strain in the seasonal vaccine — to induce what’s thought to be a protective response in just over half of the volunteers. In a world where need will outstrip supply, that’s a wholly unworkable dosage. (...)In the years since, multiple studies have been conducted to see whether adjuvants could lower the amount of antigen needed and stretch supplies. They do. (...) “I would be very curious to know what the global production capacity for the relevant adjuvants that we have data for would be. And I suspect it would be vastly insufficient to what is needed,” Hatchett said.
Source: Massive amounts of H5N1 vaccine would be needed if there’s a bird flu pandemic. Can we make enough?
“It’s a good news story that we have bulk vaccine in [a government stockpile] but I don’t think we should assume that all Americans will get jabs,” said another federal health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation.
Source: How prepared the U.S. is for a bird flu pandemic
Federal officials now say that in the event of an H5N1 pandemic, they would be able to supply a few hundred thousand doses within weeks, followed by 10 million doses using materials already on hand, and then another 125 million within about four months. People would need two doses of the shot to be fully protected. A spokesperson for Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response, the HHS division responsible for pandemic preparations, said that if needed, the agency would work with manufacturers to “to ramp up production to make enough vaccine doses to vaccinate the entire U.S. population.” But the agency didn’t articulate plans beyond those first 135 million doses, which would be enough to inoculate roughly 68 million people in a country of more than 330 million.
Source: U.S. Could Vaccinate a Fifth of Americans in a Bird Flu Emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) says its estimates suggest that 4-8bn doses of influenza vaccines could be produced within a year in an H5N1 pandemic. Experts say that would require a significant expansion of the global capacity for making flu vaccines, placed at about 1.2bn doses. “Remember that it takes two doses, three to four weeks apart, to achieve protective immunity,” says Poland. “You can quickly do the maths and see where that leaves us.”
Source: ‘The issue is when to pull the trigger’: how prepared are we for human bird flu?
While manufacturers have been working on H5N1 vaccines since the mid-2000s, research has always indicated that they pose a much greater technical challenge than the seasonal flu vaccines distributed each year. In particular, the jabs seem to require a far larger dose to generate a sufficient immune response. A dose of the H5N1 vaccine candidate manufactured by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is 90 micrograms, six times the size of a typical seasonal flu vaccine.
Source: ‘The issue is when to pull the trigger’: how prepared are we for human bird flu?
“All this costs money,” he says. “It’s a very delicate juggling act. With vaccines, for example, if we begin diverting all the vaccine production to make H5N1 jabs, that means we don’t make the seasonal flu vaccines. So if you start an H5N1 vaccine programme prematurely, you’ve disrupted the supply of seasonal flu vaccines which are still needed.”
Source: ‘The issue is when to pull the trigger’: how prepared are we for human bird flu?

Antiviral Drugs

While two drugs are not in use anymore due to resistance mutations, there are still five antiviral drugs used for influenza treatment.

>> Influenza Drugs

Vaccines

There are currently seven approved vaccines. Five rely on chicken eggs, two are more modern. Four companies are currently developing mRNA influenza vaccines.

>> Influenza Vaccines

Antibodies

Three companies are testing antibodies that may provide protection against a broad range of influenza viruses for many months.

>> Influenza Antibodies

Masks

Masks are highly effective personal protective equipment preventing exposure to influenza viruses, which infect the respiratory tract.

>> Face Masks