Breaking news - Bird flu!

AIDS in Africa is all about lack of education and corruption on a grand scale. CJD was blown out of all proportion by the media, same as every other ridiculous scare story.

 

BSE was a ridiculous scare story too wasn't it until....

 

I don't have access to all the rubbish that was reported at the time; however we were informed by respected sources, that we would suffer an epidemic, some 10 – 15 years hence the like not experienced since the great plague. Utter rot as usual. Yes people have died; 28 in 2000, 20 in 2001 & 17 in 2002. Yes, very sad indeed for those concerned, but not the endemic death rate as reported.

 

Bird flu is scary because a high proportion of the people who have contracted it (from birds) have died. Once it mutates into a form that is contractable between humans then a lot more people will get it. Therefore a lot of people will die. Is that not a bit worrying?

Figures of 2.5% mortality of total population are being talked about in government circles if it becomes a human epidemic. That is one in forty people.

 

IF it mutates

 

The theory is if it infects someone who is also carrying human flu that it may be able mutate to a version which can be passed between people rather than only bird to person.

If you think it through though the most successful diseases are the ones that dont wipe out the host. So in a way the H5N1 virus is a bit of a ponce, albeit a deadly ponce.

 

Actually thats not the main worry, although thats possible. The main worry is that it will acquire the genes (by simple mutation which occurs whenever the virus replicates itself, its almost like a brute force approach a computer program might adopt in searching for a password/combination) necessary for human to human infection without recombination with another of flu (currently one of the main barriers is h5n1's poor ability to infect our upper respiratory tract - it binds to sugars on the surface of cells, cells deeper in the lungs have similar sugars to bird cells, unlike cells from further up).

This is what happened with the 1918 'spanish flu' Another human flu pandemic is overdue, but thats not to say it will be h5n1. Its easy to stick our heads in the sand and say its all scaremongering, but that doesnt mean it wont happen.

Think i might go feed the poor old swans tomorrow.

 

It is already mutating and accummulating the changes need to jump species. It isnt a random process for bird flu - it swaps genes with other human flu viruses that already have thopse changes and that is why it is so dangerous.

 

Never believe anything the media says. They know that sex violence and death sells papers.

I got prretty unerved by the SARs thing. The first (known) easily transmitable supervirus. That has potential! So i get a bit into the media hype and my dad becomes Englands first case. He had a bad flu for three weeks and was fine.

OH NO an extra week sick!

Sure if it spreads people will die. But if any flu virus spreads people will die.

The only problem with modern media is no-one really knows what is going on in the world.

 

SARS isnt that transmittable - which is why it all blew over. Flu is an order of magnitude more infectious and can be airborn. A pandemic will occur as they have always occured - but noone knows when or wether it will be h5n1 or something else.

 

Why not? It's not like I'm going to do what a man's supposed to (reproduce) as I'll have disabled kids, so bring it on.

We'll all be dead by 2023 due to global starvation anyway, assuming China DOESN'T relax its 1 child per family rule. If it DOES relax it, I'll give us a decade.

Why prolong the inevitable.

I've never had normal 'flu, even during the 1990 epidemic, so it'll only be fair to contract the full-on bird death.

As for snogging sick birds, you should have seen my ex

 

Its far far more complicated than that. It doesnt need any contact with human flu to acquire the genes needed to become more infectious to humans. And if that happens the evidence suggests that it will be more deadly than if it was 'hybridised' (for want of a better word). The problem is that not very many people have even reasonable understanding of how viruses evolve (for want of a better word and without getting into whether a virus is life or not which is different discussion). And the media do nothing to help this.

Thats how natural selection works. Many non-viable or non beneficial mutations occur as part of the viruses replication life cycle, and because they carry no benefits are not usually succesful and hence dont replicate. Should a mutation occur through transcription errors that is advantageous that gene will obviously survive due to the advantage it confers. Flu viruses have a highish mutation rate and whilst this has its problems it also confers a big advantage to it for survival of the fittest. This process is called antigenic drift. The process of acquiring genes from other strains is called antigenic shift.

 

There is a body of evidence to support the theory that even the deadliest vira (latin plural?) become less deadly over time. Hence why those such as Spanish Flu come and go in pathogen terms. Lets not forget many thousands of people die per year in the UK due to "normal" flu (22,000 in 2003 for example).

 

No it doesnt, but it does make it a lot easier to swap genes with a flu virus that already has the adaptations as well as utilising random mutation. Its a mixture of these two processes that makes flu such a problem. Flu viruses actually dont mutate that much compared to say HIV - which explores evolution space millions of times more quickly.

Pathogens only become less virulent over time if it suits the spread of their genes to do - they can become more virulent as well. Rabies hasnt become less virulent over tens of thousands of years due to its mode of transmission, host process and incubation and it is the deadliest of all known viruses.