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Researchers Reconstruct 1918 Flu Virus
Gnpatton writes "CNN is running a story on how researchers have recreated the gene sequence for the 1918 virus which claimed 50 million lives. The mapping for the gene sequence was found on a victim frozen in Alaskan permafrost. From the article: 'Using a technique called reverse genetics, the Mount Sinai researchers used the genetic coding to create microscopic, virus-like strings of genes, called plasmids.'" Researchers are hoping that reconstructing a virus like this will help them to better understand similar problems. The structure was originally determined earlier this year.
But...please try to stick to things that can easily be killed with the tip of well-placed soldering iron.
FUD. Science must progress and if testing with 'real' virii is the answer and the risk than what are the choices, really? We wait for the research to be done on us but by the wrong people? I for one welcome my forward leaning overloads.
Heres another article at the BBC
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4308872.stm
and another one from ABC news, about how they in their enlightened wisdom (read fearmongering) think that the asian birdflu will result in similar problems.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Flu/story?id=1183172
i would have posted as ANON but aparently 212 minutes since i last posted a comment is not enough time to wait between comments
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
.. in getting them to cure the darn cold I currently have.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
What if this secured facility gets compromised, an accident happens that leads to the infection of one of the staff, testtubes are improperly sterilized. I could name hundreds of things that could go wrong, and will not even start wildly speculating what would happen if 5HN1 somehow mutates with this virus.
You can make this argument about any virus. Your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, implies that we should not do any research on any harmful micro-organism for fear of it getting out. Ignoring harmful things and hoping they go away is not an intelligent strategy.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
time to read up on Stephen King's "The Stand", to catch up on those survival techniques.... now here's hoping I'm one of that particulat fraction of society..
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
This bug could end life on the planet Earth for man if it were to escape during this time of frequent flights and fast travel.
How would that occur, exactly, if its mortality rate less than 5 per cent (and those who recover are immune)?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
In otherwords, rather than studying this virus in a controlled environment, you propose waiting until a similar virus capable of killing millions appears all on its own.
Your reasoning is that terrorists (who so far have only ever managed to kill a few thousand people at any one time) might somehow acquire the virus, when they haven't yet managed to acquire and use one of thousands of other deadly agents.
It's in my very own city.
I'll let everyone know how everything goes if it ev
And likely would take millions of deaths to defeat again if we don't learn anything about how it works/is similar to current bird flu's(whats the plural form of flu?). The CDC probably has enough viruses and diseases that something like this is the least of anybodies concern if something happened at the CDC and stuff got out.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Being the exceedingly paranoid type, let me ask this - if we found a victim frozen in the permafrost, and viruses don't die by freezing - is it likely that some guy might actually contract this virus again and cause another catastrophe ?. Maybe some warm summer it gets into the water table or something.
However safe the experiment in itself might have been, external contamination if the virus is out there is a serious concern. Half of Europe is immune to some strains of typhoid and plague, thanks to natural selection. But these days viruses can travel on jet airliners , in business class - they are not limited to the region of previous occurrence.
Hopefully the current healthy diets, good healtcare and lack of a recent war should ensure that another Spanish Flu breakout cannot happen.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Then again, this article is hugely outdated, as a simple wikipedia article tells us they recreated the virus in 2002 already. That leads to an even more doubtful stance on the exact reasons for creating this particular strain today...
You misread it: In an experiment, published in October 2002, they were successful in creating a virus with two 1918 genes.
It does not say they recreated the original virus. The 1918 virus occured before flu vaccines had come about. As such, we currently have no vaccine against that particular strain. The researchers think that by studying the 1918 virus they can learn some information that may help with the current avian flu 5HN1.
Does the 1918 virus scare the shit out of me? Yes, just as much as the idea of 5HN1 infecting humans. But if studying the 1918 flu help combat 5HN1, I'm all for it.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Other researchers in the field have questioned the scientific benefits of bringing back the lethal virus which once took an estimated 50 million lives. Counterterrorism experts have described a potential doomsday scenario for this virus which the population is no longer as immune to, wherein it once again ends up being spread among the general population.
Asked for comment, Dr. Jeffrey Tauenberger, who led the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology team that restored the virus, cackled "Fools! I'll destroy them all!"
"'If one must live then one must die.' - oh, the truth must be funnier than this..." -- MammÃt
Indeed. Well, just to head off about 90% of the comments which will be "oh noes the scientists will kill us all!", they are putting the DNA into plasmids, not a virus capsule. The only way this presents a danger is if they put ALL the DNA in together with the correct promoter and deliberately infected it into a mammalian host, and even then there's little chance.
Put another way, we are much more at risk from Asian Bird Flu than we are from this virus.
Incidentally, how is Avian Flu being reported in america? Here in Aus we don't hear much, even though I (and the WHO) are convinced it's the next big pandemic.
Personally I'm much more scared of avian flu than terrorists...
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
There's an interesting TV show (Canadian, no less) called Regenesis that featured just such a concept.
Hooked me for a few episodes.
$0.02 (CDN)
I am sure someone who actually knows about biology will correct me if I'm wrong... but surely the reason we are alive today is because we are descended from the people who were immune to the original strain of the virus?
"Almost" doesn't cut it. And if you think the former Soviet Union (and former United States) really eliminated their last reserves of the virus, you're seriously deluded.
> Now they are reviving an old virus that was completely eradicated. This does not make sense, other than for the nobel-prize signs in the scientists eyes (which they should not get).
The 1918 pandemic strain killed off the most vulnerable portion of the population three or four generations ago. Subsequently, mutations to that strain that were less virulent than the original appeared. These less-virulent strains didn't kill their hosts as quickly (and often, didn't kill the host at all!), and turned out to be better-adapted to their environment than the original. These less-virulent strains worked their way throughout the rest of the population. The world ended up with a not-so-bad version of the flu, and a relatively high resistance in the surviving population. All in all, a lousy environment for the original or the less-virulent strains to propagate.
Don't worry about the 1918 flu getting out. First, it almost certainly won't. Second, if it does, it won't be nearly as bad as it was in 1918, largely due to the fact that anyone who was highly vulnerable to it had been ejected from the gene pool by 1920.
> I could name hundreds of things that could go wrong, and will not even start wildly speculating what would happen if 5HN1 somehow mutates with this virus.
Don't worry about an H5N1 recombination (or reassortment) with the 1918 flu. You'd need someone to be simultaneously infected with both viruses. The probability of that is vanishingly small. (As is the probability of the 1918 flu escaping and setting up a reservoir population in birds or pigs.)
Worry about a human-to-human transmissible evolution of H5N1. If the strain currently fiddling around Jakarta is reproducing by means of human to human transmission, and if that strain is doing so via casual contact (to date, it appears that most cases from this cluster involve zoo visitors, their immediate families, and health care workers -- so we don't yet have confirmation of h2h transmission, let alone via casual contact), then worry.
If a human-to-human transmissible of H5N1 shows up, and if it's as lethal to humans as the version currently floating around Asia, you're looking at somewhere between 100M and 300M dead before a weaker variant evolves.
The pandemic of 1918 was nightmarish (the young and healthy were particularly prone to fatal infection) but I'm not sure contemporary travel would have further aggrivated the outbreak.
The soldiers returning from the fronts of the First World War possibly spread the infection as well as any buisness class traveller could today. Also, this disease is an airborne pathogen (it reproduces in lung tissue), and in its day managed to sweep the globe incredibly quickly.
One additional point made today by researchers is that the 1918 influenza was almost surely an avian flu that mutated and infected humans. It's not too different from the current superbug that everyone is eyeing warily. Perhaps some of the benefit of this research is studying how a virus mutates and crosses the lines from one species to another. Theoretically it could better prepare us to resist an impending pandemic.
One question - aren't most contemporary humans immune to the 1918 bug?
You're exaggerating. It can kill millions and throw much of the world into a panic, just as it did in 1918, but it can't wipe everyone out like in "The Stand." Here, let me give you a little flu remedy: mix 24oz of water, add 2 tbsp ground fresh ginger, 1 tbsp cayenne pepper, 6 oz lemon juice. Mind you, these are approximations. Heat the mixture to just about boiling, let it cool just enough to take internally. Drink it--all of it. The shit tastes terrible, but it works.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Maybe we should start detonating H-bombs above ground again to see if we can learn something new from that ?
It might be fun actually. I think that we should to atmospheric nuclear tests on big holidays. It could be like fireworks, only much more entertaining.
I understand your intuition that reviving a killed off deadly strain of the flu could be dangerous, but given the mutability of flu viruses, the potential for new deadly strains is very much real and we have to study our epidemiological history to avoid them.
Studying viruses is very difficult, as you can only tell so much from examining the raw sequence information or using simulations. Everything from the exact mechanism of transmission to how this flu caused so many deaths to (and this is probably the most important) how this bug made it from animals to humans is still not precisely known. In order to learn such things, you'd have to directly infect some test organisms or cells and observe the effects and do other lab studies using a live viruses. There is just no substitute. (Another controversial approach involves deliberately crossing human and avian and porcine flus to try and generate one that will cross between the species)
The justification for doing so is clear, and goes beyond a desire for Nobel glory, many scientists agree that we are just a day away from another deadly and widespread flu epidemic. If we are going to predict and prevent such an epidemic, we need to really understand the kinds of features that made the "Spanish" flu possible and so potent. Another massive problem we have is the utter lack of real epidemiological surveillance in large domesticated animal populations (on chicken and pig farms, for example). Not only do we need to do this, but we need to understand the viral features that we need to look for.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
I am sure someone who actually knows about biology will correct me if I'm wrong... but surely the reason we are alive today is because we are descended from the people who were immune to the original strain of the virus?
More likely because our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents were either not infected or lived after becoming infected. Doing a quick search find that the mortality rate was 2.5%. That means that 2.5% of all those who became infected died. Given that 50 million people died, that's 2 billion people that were infected. Chances are you foreparents had it.
So are we immune? No. Did we descend from the lucky ones? Yes.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Notice the emerging pattern (1->2, 1->3, 3X2, 1->2, 2->3); next will be 3X1, or Flu kills God. Like, duh. ;)
--whoa, the flu can kill God?!? *head explodes*
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The 1918 flu didn't kill very many people directly. What killed was secondary infections such as pneumonia. Modern medicine may not be much better than 1918 medicine at dealing with viruses, but treatment of bacterial infections has come a long way since then. Besides, we don't have an entire generation of young men who were exposed to poison gas this time around.
I don't think that the 1918 flu would be the major killer now that it was originally.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Why? How else are we supposed to understand the capabilities of the virus that will cause the next pandemic, if we don't observe a virus that caused a previous one? The nature of influenza viruses, and particularly the highly virulant ones, must be fully mapped to give us the knowledge to understand where they come from, how they spread, and hopefully, how to develop vaccines and other treatments to prevent another 1918-like outbreak.
Or we can just go "that's scary", bury are heads in the sand and be taken out when another uber-virulent bird flu makes the leap from cross-species infection to human-to-human infection.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Once again as someone that work in the field of virology/microbiology I am a little suprised by the sensationalism that gets attached to these things, especially considering the rather skeptical crowd here. I am not overly worried about the chance of this one getting out and killing a billion people. First, they have simply made the gene, there is a lot more that is required before you have infectious virus. Second, labs that work with potentially dangerous/infectious do have safety precautions (despite the general cynicism of /.'ers) and the incidence of scientists getting infected with what they work with is very low. Third, there have been MASSIVE leaps in medical treatment and sanitation since 1918. This is not to say that we should not worry about big pandemics because we should, but so far we have been able to survive.
The final bit that doesn't make me worry about these scientists reverse engineering the gene is the simple fact that this doesn't change anything as far as pandemic risk goes. We are just as likely to get a horrendous pandemic from a "wild" source as we are from this flu strain infecting a scientist who suddenly goes on a globe trotting spree of some kind. At this point in our global development as a species it is really only a matter of time before we get a big pandemic a la 1918. I mean AIDS is already a pandemic and if we get something that is more acute the death toll will simply be more noticable. It is far more important to study how to defend against viruses that could cause pandemics. It is not often that scientists can get a virus that they know for certain has caused one. The research that can be done now is much more beneficial than the potential risks.
"With or without air travel, if the 1918 flu killed everyone that even had contact with a person who had the flu, entire societies would have been wiped off the earth. I am pretty sure that didn't happen then, and dont think it happen now."
Actually I think that I heard the idea that some viruses are too strong for their own good, for example Ebola. If they have 100% death rate (Ebola is close) they kill themselves -- viruses need to leave people alive to get spread or need to have very long incubation period. A virus that kills 100% of the people it infects in 1 day is less dangerous than a virus that kills 60% in 2 weeks.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
"New man creates flu.
And what do you think comes next?"
New man whips up flu vaccine for known flu strain.
It's not like we're talking about AIDS or some other untreatable disease, once we know what strain we're dealing with, the only problem we have left is distributing the flu vaccine. And I'm under the impression that, unless we dig up an example of the strain that caused the 1918 pandemic, we can't easily create a vaccine to defend against it.
Welcome to the Twenty-First Century.
I read in a another article that the they found a number of striking similarities between the 1918 virus and the mutations that are starting to appear in the bird flu virus. What's more worrying is that these are the kind of mutations that caused the outbreak in 1918.
You can probably do a Google search on this.
Just curious, what's the security around places like this? If these guys can hack a virus strain like this, what's the keep someone from stealing the virus and releasing back into the wild?
A: Yes. In TFA it says that one of the reasons this was approved is because it is believed that human's still poses immunity which was passed down from our ancestors in 1918.
While that's true for most flu seasons, the 1918 pandemic strain was unusual. A fair number of deaths occured from primary influenza infections in 1918. At first, scientists had assumed that the bacterial Haemophilus influenza was the cause of the pandemic (later implicated as one of the more common causes of bacterial meningitis in children).
After the influenza virus was discovered, many still believed that it only killed because it allowed secondary infections. As it turns out, the 1918 pandemic strain had many clinical features similar to SARS as well as influenza (bloody sputum, hemorrhagic pneumonia, overwhelming inflammatory response, and disseminated intravascular coagulation) from influenza alone. The most dangerous of the secondary infections was (and remains) Strep pneumoniae.
Poison gas had little to nothing to do with influenza deaths in 1918. The majority of influenza deaths among the American military occurred in state-side barracks before they even had a chance to be shipped to Europe."No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
The press doesn't harp on it much, but anytime they mention it they call it the next big pandemic. National Geographic covers it in the current issue, and they've got a little presentation about it on their website.
And the brethren went away edified.
>
> One hundred forty-six volunteers were randomized to receive a placebo or an allicin-containing garlic supplement [
Ah, Garlic. Best vegetable ever. The antisocial geek's friend.
I prefer my garlic the old-fashioned way. One head of garlic (peel, squeeze through garlic press or otherwise grind it into mush), raw, whipped into one stick (1/4 lb) of butter. Spread over bread (cheese optional), toast, eat. Throw a teaspoon or two into a bowl of piping hot pasta (and grate some real Parmigiana Reggiano over it, none of that powdered cheese in a can crap). As a side dish, slug down a glass or two of red wine.
Take another head of garlic, peel it, and toss 3/4 of the cloves into a whole raw chicken. Slip the rest of the cloves between the skin and the meat. Roast tha mothaplucka. Good eatin' again.
(Whenever you roast a chicken, just throw another head of garlic into the oven next to the chicken. When the chicken's done, squeeze the now-mushy cooked garlic into a small jar. Dip a hunk of fresh artisan bread into the garlic mush, and then into some extra virgin olive oil. Yet more good eatin'!)
Some people think I eat too much garlic. Not true. Only once have I eaten so much garlic in a single sitting that I've been able to smell garlic on my farts for the next three days.
People at the office tend to avoid me. In fact, if I eat enough of the stuff (see above), even people whose noses are stuffed up with the flu tend to avoid me.
Haven't had a cold in two years. Funny how things works out. Must be the garlic.
Damn, I love garlic.
Exactly. Also, you may be interested to know that aquired immunity (such as what you get when you survive an infection, or get a vaccine) is not carried in the germline, ie can not be inherited.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Chances are, they have as many self-powered, automated, ventilators as they have intensive care beds, which in most community hospitals is perhaps a dozen.
If a more than a few dozen patients show up with rapidly fulminating viral pneumonia, (the main cause of death in the avian flu), they whole system is quickly overwhelmed.
Supposedly, the government has hundreds, (thousands ?) of ventilators on standby for just such an emergency (or terrorist act). Look at what happened in New Orleans recently for a live example. Hospital staff were keeping people alive with small self inflating (Ambu) bags. It takes one person to a patient, every minute of the day to keep them alive that way. That person squeezing the bag can't do much else either.
If you get it, chances are good that you're going to die.
The news is full of stuff about how deadly the bird flu will be when it strikes. Now, the news says that the 1918 flu was linked to bird flu. But those of us who are over 40 remember the same sort of talk back in 1976...about 'swine flu.' Swine flu killed healthy soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ in 1976 and was alleged to be the same as the 1918 flu that killed millions. As a result, the president at the time (Ford) ordered a program of national vaccination for every man, woman and child in the United States. Most people received the 'swine flu' shot which made most who received it a little sick for 1 or 2 days. Then the swine flu didn't appear and everyone forgot about it. Now, supposedly the '1918 flu' is coming back again in the form of 'bird flu' so I have some questions:
1) Why isn't the current president ordering vaccinations for everyone? The technology of making flu vaccines is pretty routine, even if the flue is alleged to be unusually lethal. Instead, President Bush is talking about imposing martial law and using the military to quarantine those portions of the country where the bird flu strikes.
2) Why is the 1976 vaccine that was allegedly protective against the '1918 flu' not being resuscitated and updated to be used in 2005?
People catch colds when it's cold out, not because of the temperature, but because they tend to stay indoors and socialize more. Colds spread by being in close contact with others with colds.
So garlic helps keep people from being in close contact with each other, and therefore prevents colds.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
The why?
/.
According to Dr Tumpey, "We felt we had to recreate the virus and run these experiments to understand the biological properties that made the 1918 virus so exceptionally deadly. We wanted to identify the specific genes responsible for its virulence, with the hope of designing antivirals or other interventions that would work against virulent pandemic or epidemic influenza viruses."
Since we get hit with flu pandemics every 30 years or so, and this is viewed as inevitable, it makes sense to me that we want to understand what are their more dangerous aspects, especially in their earliest incarnation.
CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding said, "Today's human flu viruses are all descendants of the 1918 flu, which means people have some immunity to them. What is frightening about H5N1 is that people do not have any immunity to it."
Is fear mongering such as the grandparent post really appropriate here? Don't we expect scientists to try to do something about the avian flu after so many warnings? Tumpey says that after 3 years of scientific reviews and approvals, the public health risk is believed to be minimal. Of course, if someone here can authoritatively speak to why it will break out of level 3 containment at a single CDC center and be more harmful than expected, then by all means reply to this post....and contact the CDC directly too. Maybe they don't read
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
You really don't need to go to that extent. The flu is a virus. That means that it's up to your immune system to knock it out. That means that you don't need to eat some nasty concoction to help you feel better once you're sick. The best bet you have is to eat things that will boost your immune system--BEFORE you catch something. The reason you feel bad when you're sick isn't because of the illness, what you fell is your own immune system fighting back. It causes fever, aches, soreness, etc. The best way to fight the flu is to give your immune system the tools it needs to fight the flu before it becomes a problem by proliferating in your system. So drink some orange juice, get plenty of rest and try to keep your stress levels from being highly elevated for more than 2 days at a time. Those are REAL flu remedies.
According to Wikipedia, we didn't hit 2 billion until 1927, and they say more about the 1918 outbreak that is pretty interesting. Global population in 1918 was about 1.8 billion.
.5% died, that would still be 20 million dead.
The mortality rate was estimated at 2.5% to 5% of the population, not those that were infected. Only 20% of the population was infected, making the mortality rate closer to 14% to 28% of those infected. Basically, if you got it, you more than 1 in 5 chance of dying.
Now, add the fact that we are entirely more mobile, and it would be devistating. We have not had a disease that spreads this quick since then, and if it was gotten lose, it would likely expose 2/3 of the population of the planet before we knew what hit us. Fortunately, we have better medicine now, but even if we reduced the mortality by 75%, you are looking at:
~20% of exposed died in 1918 vs 5% now
360mil exposed in 1918 vs. 4 billion now.
50,000 died in 1918 vs 200 million now.
200 million dead, potentially. Not guaranteed, not high, not low, just realistic potential.
Yea, I say we be really freaking careful how we handle this virus. Obviously, this is more easily spread than SARS or anything else we have seen since 1918, and even if the fatality rate was wrong by a full factor, and just
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
My great-grandparents sent my grandmother to live with her cousins on a farm for 18 months so that she would be safe, in the end she avoided the flu, but one of the cousins died of it. What would happen today? Would people take such extreme steps?
This goes back a bit on a different disease. Polio, one of the ones that the US has greatly worked on eradicating (along with smallpox and some others). Polio is the disease that you get a check for in gym class in elementary to this day. Back when it was more common, people that could afford to would send their children out of the cities to the country side to get them away from the cities. Most of the people that caught polio were in the cities. My grandfather was one of them, President FDR is believed to have been another. That was a "mere" 60 years ago. Ask your parents/grandparents about polio for more details.
For today? I don't know if people could get there kids far enough away. Not many people live or have relatives who live on farms. One of the advantages of mechanization has been that we can have (at this point) under 2 % of the population feed the other 99% as opposed to the way it used to be of 95% needed to feed the other 5%. So I think it might be quite hard to do that.
The same strain of flu can't travel as easily due to two major advancements in medical knowlege. The first being anti-biotics. Most people don't die of the flu (or pneumonia or a few others). They die of secondary infections that can surface when you have a weakend immune system. The second is this. We know about how to defend against airborne viruses (such as the flu). Back in 1918 people would cover their mouthes, but not their noses. I remember one program on the 1918 flu where they showed an old recording of a nurse "Correcting" another nurses mouth covering so that it did not cover her nose. The 1918 flu sitll had the problem of lungs filling up with water. Not sure if that was due to the flu itself or one of the secondary infections. Hopefully we can deal with that with todays technolgy. Either way, it won't spread as quickly once people start taking precautions. However, before we take precatuions it will probably spread faster due to air travle and the higher amount of travel in general today compared to 1918.
As for what might happen if we had an epidemic of those proportions or larger that we can't contain? Check with the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to make sure, but the following is my theory. First thing would be that Hawaii and Alaska would try to isolate themselves as much as possible from the rest of the country. The borders would probably close with no one allowed in or out. (And if we were serious we'd station a batalion on each of the borders to enforce this.) Regional areas would probably try to quarantine themselves with restrictions on travel and movement put in place to try to keep the disease from spreading. Interesting enough, Stargate SG-1 on the season ender just had one where we had a plague get loose in the general populace. "Long" incubation period of a few days where people were carriers/spreaders prior to symptons showing and death not long after. I think they had large cities in the US infected in under 4 days after symptoms started showing. There has been a lot of studying on how quickly a viruse can spread depending on mortality rate, incubation time and a few other things. So far, most of it aint pretty.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
You better send those researchers a memo or something. I'm sure they're being all careless and shit, flinging beakers and test tubes back and forth across the lab, since they must not understand the danger.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Currently the virus can spread from bird to bird and from bird to human. However it does NOT spread from human to human
When the virus infects humans there is a very high fatality rate, and a brutal morbidity(needing hospitilization) rate. This is the first strain (N1) of its type (H5) that we have encountered, so vaccines can't be produced. There is a fear that this "bird flu" H5N1 will mutate into a strain that can jump from human to human. This is a very real fear, as flu is known to make these jumps. Even conservative estimates place the death toll in the millions if a Human to Human H5N1 flu emerges.
Tamiflu and Releenza are anti-virals that have been suggested as treatments for H5N1, however there are some reports that these treatments have been inneffective, with only mild attenuation of viral load. However Tamiflu and Releenza are the only available known treatments available, and these drugs are in short supply.
Hope this helps
Storm
I would be much more worried about the new avian flu we are facing today. according to the NY times, it so far has had a mortality rate of 60%, namely, nothing we do has any effect.
our only real luck has been that it doens't spread well from person to person yet.
what I'm curious about, and I really don't know the answer. If this strain was something my grandfather (for example) had and lived through, wouldnt it make it likely that people that are alive today would be of the strain of people that can survive the virus?
Androk
Actually, it's just that the research has been going on for quite a while. I read a cover story on the subject in Scientific American quite a while ago - late last year IIRC.
No,
They simply read Robin Cook's "Contagion", which was released back in 1996.
In the story (minor spoiler),
A hospital has recurring internal infection problems with exotic disesases, including plague and Spanish flu.
(major spoiler)
Certain parties that enjoyed collecting and cultivating viruses come across specimens in the yukon permafrost frozen to death, infected with Spanish flu. These parties eventually become involved in a plot to discredit a hospital by planting viruses to cause internal infections, and use the Spanish flu to cause panic (and unknowlingly threaten an epidemic).
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.