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I asked What does it mean to say that egg derived vaccines are "cheap but slow to produce"? and it was closed as "Homework questions are off-topic on Biology".

This is not homework, the question is prompted by the quoted Nature News article that was published the same day as I posted the question.

Perhaps I could have provided a reference for my summary of the timeline of eggs production, perhaps the image below from here, I did not because I thought I provided a summary in the text. Is that all that is missing, or is there something fundamentally wrong with the question?

a cycle in the production of a monovalent lot of influenza vaccine

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  • $\begingroup$ The question was closed because of the comments below the question; the answer is so obvious. What more do you need to know other than that the author(s) of the article think production is cheap? The only answer I can think of are finding synonyms for cheap; financially attractive, not expensive, profitable etc etc. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Jul 15 at 9:24
  • $\begingroup$ @AliceD That is only half the question. "Cheap but slow" is presented as a negative, as part of the justification for the development of mRNA technology. As the final paragraph of the question attempts to highlight, cheap but takes a few months, and only in the last couple do you actually need the precise virus to be grown up are really good features of a pandemic virus. If that is not clear, that is the problem with the question. $\endgroup$
    – User65535
    Commented Jul 15 at 10:00
  • $\begingroup$ That indeed was not clear to me, but may have been sloppy reading on my end; having said that, however, my comment above counts for 'slow' too; what do you want to know about that? What is unclear about something being slow? And the close reason 'homework' is often used here to urge OP to look for answers themselves; unclear questions like this one often become much clearer and more focused once OP sums up the relevant issues that they already found on a web search. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Jul 15 at 11:57
  • $\begingroup$ @AliceD If it was not clear to you I am sure the error was mine. I have edited the question, I hope it is better now. If there is a need to mark a question quoting a nature article published that day as "homework" that demonstrates a need for a new feature. $\endgroup$
    – User65535
    Commented Jul 15 at 12:25

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The comments address the post’s particular question, but I am adding an answer to explain the use of “Homework” on this site.

There are a limited number of options for list members with sufficient privilege to select in order to vote to close a question. Unfortunately there is no option “The user could easily find the answer himself (from the internet, text books or dictionaries)”. Rather than write a custom reason of the type I suggested here, the “homework” option is frequently used as it has the convenient feature that homework questions are off-topic “if the poster has not showed that he has made an attempt to answer the question himself”.

Imperfect perhaps, confusing for new users certainly, but life’s not always perfect.

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