Swine Flu Genetics Suggest a Vaccine Is Possible

Kristina at Science News writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced findings May 1 from genetic studies of swine flu virus from six different countries. A strong similarity from country to country suggests all the infections are from one strain, making a vaccine a strong possibility. It will be several months at least before such a vaccine would be developed, though."

Comments

H1N1 A flu, please

[mangu]

Let's keep things straight, this misnaming has already caused too much harm.

Re:H1N1 A flu, please

[Kligat]

I think we should rename AIDS so as to placate the hearing aids industry. We could call it Sean, or Christine.

Re:H1N1 A flu, please

[artor3]

Too late for that. Everyone knows it as swine flu... having the media call it something else won't change a thing.

The real thing that the media needs to be putting straight is just how little of a threat this flu is. It hasn't been any more lethal than seasonal flu, nor is it really spreading as fast as was originally believed.

The media is causing a panic simply for ratings, which is quite despicable when you think about it.

Re:H1N1 A flu, please

[7-Vodka]

Actually the H1N1 does not mean what you think it means.

The H stands for Hemagglutanin, a glycoprotein; the N stands for Neuraminidase, a glycosilated enzyme. Both are found on the surface of the virus which can expose them as a good target to use. There are actually other abbreviations referring to different parts of the influenza A RNA based genome.

H1N1 just indicates the type of Hemagglutanin and Neuraminidase... There are other H1N1 flu viruses as well, like the so called spanish flu which actually originated in the USA. H1N1 doesn't specify a strain originating from pigs and so swine flu might even be a better denomination.

Re:H1N1 A flu, please

[7-Vodka]

Also now having rtfa, I noticed this is even mentioned:

influenza comes in many strains, each a slightly different version of the flu virus. The new flu strain infecting people around the globe is unique in that, although it has a well-known surface protein combination, H1N1, the H in this protein pairing has swine origins. Whether this trait will give this strain of flu virus unusual characteristics remains to be seen."

Re:H1N1 A flu, please

[Opportunist]

You know what bothers me the most? That it's invariably people who don't give a shit about the "common flu" who go headless chicken over this craze.

There's no vaccine. Yes. Did you get inoculated against the normal flu? No? THEN WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE?

Re:H1N1 A flu, please

[MrMarket]

The drift from pigs to humans (and therefore no vaccine in production) caused the initial concern. Furthermore, this could come back more virulent in the winter. The 1918 flu was also H1N1, and it had three waves. The second wave was the big killer.

Stop the madness

[wondercool]

Sofar it looks like this is just another influenza variant.

Stop panicking, it's really not interesting enough. What has taken us? Some irrational fear of death? No other news? Organisations beating their drum for self preservation?

Please?!

Re:Stop the madness

[jd]

What's interesting is:

(a) The total lack of action by the Mexican Government, when it was still considered entirely possible that it was going to be extremely dangerous.

(b) The totally inappropriate responses by most of the other world Governments, and

(c) The very slow and questionable response by health care officials who have been preparing for a major flu epidemic for some time now and AUGHT to have much better procedures by this time.

This particular strain looks like it's relatively mild. It is missing a protein that is carried by the deadlier strains, for a start. However, what this experience tells us is that those ultimately responsible for handling epidemics and pandemics are incompetent and/or corrupt, and will be utterly ineffective should a pandemic actually occur.

If this ineptness is repeated when a deadly flu virus outbreak does happen, we will see an outcome not much different from 1918 or any other such disaster. THAT is what we should be worried about.

(Not that this is new. After Y2K, did we see any effort to fix the 2038 bug? Nooooo. It's a long time off and we'll have replaced all our software by then, just like we did with our two-digit-date software before 2000.)

Re:Stop the madness

[jd]

Well, no. It's pointless shutting down the transit system, and sticking infrared cameras everywhere (as oa few places did) was unlikely to produce results either.

Britain ordered hundreds of thousands of filtered masks. Which might stop patients from being infected by health-care workers, but would not have stopped the health-care workers from being infected. They did not order much in the way of antivirals, which were known to be effective.

America closed some schools down, which did indeed shut down the vector of kid-to-kid transmission. As sick kids often end up going to work with their parents, it did however mean that you exposed adults to any potential infection, and kids would get infected from their parents. So it didn't actually do anything useful. Again, antivirals were not being ordered.

Canada took several weeks (maybe closer to a month) to isolate the flu virus from the first-known case. Well, in all probability, they got the sample, ignored it for ages, checked it, sat on the results for a long time, and then got round to telling someone. Active they were not. When they did inform the Mexicans, they obviously didn't inform the Americans as the CDC had no information on the flu in Mexico until the Mexicans sent them the data. So we can conclude the Canadian Government - even once the concerns started coming in - sat on their own data from Mexico. If this had been something dangerous, this political foppery could have been disastrous, and the Canadians couldn't have known at that point if it was going to be a nasty situation or not.

That should be enough examples to be getting on with.

Re:Stop the madness

[KevinIsOwn]

What an incredible bunch of nonsense. The response by governments so far has actually be surprisingly good- the disease barely spread outside of North America so far, and even within North America its reach is rather limited. Had governments not acted this wouldn't be the case at all. The infections in New York City alone would have spread out of control.

Where do you come off accusing the officials of being inept or corrupt (or slow despite preparations)? You give absolutely no examples, but there are plenty of examples of officials rising to the challenge (Quickly closing schools in New York that were effected by the virus to stop the spread, quickly quarantining people who had visited Mexico who were ill with the disease and notifying passengers near them that they are at risk, having stocks of tamiflu and other drugs ready for distribution)

While the health response in Mexico clearly leaves a lot to be desired, they did eventually act, and it appears they were at least somewhat effective. If anything this indicates the need for the US to do more to ensure countries who don't have as well funded disease control centers have the resources necessary to identify these sorts of diseases before they spread all over the place.

And so although it appears the whole ordeal with this strain of flu was fairly overblown, it offered (and continues to offer) a training exercise for officials for when the real thing happens. Of course mistakes were made, but at least they can identify them and try to fix them so that we are better prepared should a pandemic come our way in the future.

(And for all the talk about how "mild" this strain is, sure it won't kill you, but having the flu with the added bonus of potential vomiting and diarrhea don't sound all that fun to me, so I'm quite happy with the continued vigilance in stopping the spread of the disease)

Re:Stop the madness

[zoney_ie]

Sick kids going to work with their parents? What on earth? If that is common in your area, it's fairly awful! Sick kids here in Ireland mostly rightly get to stay at home, either with a parent already at home (raising a family, running a household) or with a parent who simply takes time off work (certain occupations would be tricky for that, but it would seldom be both parents with such a job). Sometimes the employer might insist on annual leave being used (there is a statutory minimum of 21 days in addition to the public holidays).

If the parents can't even get time off from work to mind a sick child, one has to wonder if they really should have undertaken to raise children with both parents working. It also raises questions about there being sufficient regulation to ensure worker's rights.

Ooh, a swine flu vaccine!

[Threni]

How exciting! Because, you know, it's really dangerous, and well worthy of all the attention in the media. Isn't it? It's going to kill millions of people around the world, right? The 191..uh, make that 101 people in Mexico is just the start. Once it kicks in, the millions of (insert currency) it'll cost to develop a vaccine is going to be well worth it.

Re:Ooh, a swine flu vaccine!

[bunratty]

I'm pretty sure it will kill millions around the world... eventually. Flu kills hundreds of thousands worldwide every year, and this novel flu virus will be around for tens or even hundreds of years. If this strain is responsible for a few percent of flu deaths and is around for only 100 years, that can easily add up to millions... eventually.

So....We've all forgotten

[filmmaker]

about those torture memos with all this swine flu brouhaha, haven't we?

Re:So....We've all forgotten

[KliX]

No, we never really cared.

What torture memos?

[denzacar]

Surely you mean global economic crisis?

Re:Funny?

[Dahamma]

The Gizmodo version of the first one is even better...

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/05/pig-kisser.jpg