Is it possible to eradicate the flu virus?

Question

If yes how?

If not why not?

Answer 1

Sure, all you need to do is kill off all the organisms which can harbor the flu virus (all those that could be infected) so there is no place for the virus to reproduce.  Unfortunately, this includes all of us and all of the mammals whose physiology is close enough to humans that the virus can infect.  Then wait long enough for the existing individual virus particles to decompose (it is debatable whether a virus is a "living" thing or not).    You could also simply heat the surface of the earth to a couple hundred degrees C or expose it directly to the sun's radiation (I doubt there are any viruses living on Venus)  This also poses some practical complications if you intend to survive yourself to enjoy life without flu.  Of course, if you could do it in some manner that does not require extermination of human life, your enjoyment would be short lived.  Mutation of viruses happens relatively quickly (they reproduce very very rapidly and in very great numbers in an infected organism) so it might not take too long for a new flu virus to evolve to infect humans from some other mammal.  Short answer, not really.

Answer 2

The flu virus is an negative sense RNA virus which means High mutation rates, which means that we get several new strains every year. The vaccine is merely effective against one strain, the most infectious strain,  and the reason why you have to get a flu shot EVERY year is because the vaccine from the previous year is no longer effective.

Answer 3

Not with current technology.

There are far too many strains and they mutate too quickly for vaccines to protect against more than a handful at a time.

There is no way in the foreseeable future to eliminate the flu.