There are a lot things that I have an interest in, that I have been watching and following over many years and now through the miracle of the internet and RSS feeds, I get my inquiring mind filled even faster.
One thing that I have been following for years is the spread of virus and such, ever since I read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Early this afternoon I got this and it is very scary!
Nothing lives forever except a virus! From the BBC and others:
1918 killer flu ‘came from birds’
Flu viruses are constantly evolving. The Spanish flu virus that killed 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown.
US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia.
Writing in Nature, they say their work underlines the threat the current strain poses to humans worldwide."
I think part of the problem is that there are so many people living on the earth. At some point it becomes too crowded and people spread communicable diseases much more quickly and since they have more hosts they spread and mutate oftener.
Have thought that also Cran and for a long time. SARS is the prime example of how fast and far a disease can spread these before anybody knows about it.
Normally I could give a rip about flu but this one has me concerned, too. 50% mortality statistics…yow. Are fatalities mainly among the very young and very old, or everyone? Anyone know?
It hasn’t discrimated yet on ages, they have been all over the place! Yet there is no screening of people arriving from that area of South East Asia at major ports of entry around the world, look how fast SARS hit, especially in Toronto!
Start by avoiding this dish:
(quoting from the BBC link about a pair of brothers one of whom succumbed…)
“I guess we both got it from the last meal we shared together,” Hung said.
"I’d just got back to Thai Binh, where I’m originally from, to visit my brothers. They threw a welcoming dinner where we had our favourite dish, ‘tiet canh’, which is made with chopped congealed raw duck blood and herbs.
Huh. I always thought that Asian flus come about from the trio of birds, pigs and humans virus intermingling in water supply etc. So it wouldn’t be a surprise to me about birds…
It was on a documentary that said that birds drop virus in the water supply and that the close proximity of pigs and people in China (they often cook with pig dung) ratchets up the virus potency via mutation…
Huh. I always thought that Asian flus come about from the trio of birds, pigs and humans virus intermingling in water supply etc. So it wouldn’t be a surprise to me about birds…
It’s not that. It’s a bird virus that mutates to cause disease in pigs. Pig DNA is very, very similar to human DNA. So then the virus in the pigs can mutate a little bit more and start causing disease in humans too. Birds and pigs and people all living in close quarters, as they do in much of Asia, helps move this process along too quickly. It doesn’t surprise me that the 1918 flu (totally misnamed the Spanish flu since it really started in Kansas) also is related to birds.
Normally I could give a rip about flu but this one has me concerned, too. 50% mortality statistics…yow. Are fatalities mainly among the very young and very old, or everyone? Anyone know?
It doesn’t seem to be too picky yet. One of the interesting things about the 1918 strain is it hit young adults the hardest, which is totally opposite most flu strains. No one has been able to figure out why. Now that scientists have created the 1918 strain, and can make more to study, hopefully some of its secrets will be revealed.
We don’t know that this H5N1 Avian flu strain is going to be the next pandemic, and, while we have to try to be ready for it to be, we can’t drop our guard against another novel strain that might pop up and start all the problems. Creating a vaccine against avian is tricky because if we make one for the strain as it is now, it won’t work so well when it mutates to cause the pandemic (if it does). The technology for making inactivated flu vaccine is 30 years old and it takes 8-9 months to make a batch.
Basically, when the pandemic hits, if it’s as bad as the 1918 one (and none of the other pandemics have been, so we can take a little comfort in that) we are screwed.
Pigs are also similar enough to humans to have had a few heart transplants where pigs were the donors.
That pigs are so similar to people, and people eat them, creeps me out more than it would if people ate a more distantly related animal like, say, a grasshopper. I still don’t advocate eating grasshoppers, though.
Hey, there’s this great little taqueria around the corner from where I work that has delicious tacos and burritos al pastor (bbq pork). Just thought I 'd share, heh heh.
Back to original topic:
I too have been keeping tabs on this story. Very frightening possibilities there and I’m none too confident about our ability to manage a serious avian flu pandemic.
Young adults being the most frequent victims of the 1918 flu is a mystery? There was a WORLD WAR going on at the time, and young adults were at greater risk for illness just in general from increased stress - in the trenches, in the barracks, in hospitals, putting in long hours at munitions jobs, sailing off to God knows where to sink enemy ships or deliver supplies, all in close proximity to other equally stressed young adults. I’m surprised it took 4 years of WWI before it happened. It could have happened in the fall of 1914, as conditions were already ripe then.
