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Gene Mutation Caused 2009 H1N1 Virus Spread
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found that a gene mutation was the reason behind the increased virulence of the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus which resulted in a pandemic across the world. 'The H1N1 virus, Kawaoka explains, is really a combination of four different avian and swine flu viruses that have emerged over the past 90 years, and even includes genetic residue of the 1918 pandemic virus, an influenza that killed as many as 20 million people.' The University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine researchers identified the relocation of a specific amino acid in the gene matrix that enabled the virus to hijack host cells, a feat that triggered the recent pandemic."
The World Health Organization's director general said H1N1 is likely to lose its status as a pandemic very soon.
The "standard" flu virus is known to be different every year already. The reason why vaccines work is that it doesn't change too much. The 2009 H1N1 must have mutated at a whole other level to be that resistant.
The World Health Organization's director general said H1N1 is likely to lose its status as a pandemic very soon.
It's not gone yet?
Whoops.
Hey, can I get a single nucleotide polymorphism that enables limb regeneration?
No, I get a weird catecholamine oxidizer that makes me more likely to kill people.
Of course it was caused by a mutation, do we really need an article for this? A virus that is allowed to remain in its host populace long enough will in fact mutate, and even to harmful levels. Although I wouldn't consider this a "successful" virus in the sense that it can kill its host.
According to the WHO report from August 6th the number of confirmed deaths was less than 20,000 (http://www.who.int/csr/don/2010_08_06/en/index.html).
I don't know about anyone else, but I think the term "pandemic" is a bit overhyped. Strictly speaking it only means a wide-spread concern or issue. But with the way the media bantered it about you would have thought people were dying by the hundreds or thousands on a moment to moment basis from H1N1 infections. But alas, the actual fatality rate didn't even beat a normal flu season for the USA alone, which averages 20,000 deaths from flu in a given year. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hsc-scen-3_flu-pandemic-deaths.htm)
The H1N1 mess was a media hyped bunch of garbage.
FTFY
Simply put, H1N1 was fine tuned by the government in a lab. The H1N1 was a completely engineered 'pandemic' from top to bottom, in order to get a brainless populace to take a vaccine that will damage their DNA.
smallpox to spread?
Yours In Akademgorodok,
K. Trout
More like a pandemic of panic and anxiety... (and I am considered part of the "people at risk", I didn't bother with that vaccine)
AIDS caused the spread of the HIV. This is another reason to wish them away from civil humans.
It WAS and IS unjustified media fear mongering. They had everyone expecting another Spanish flu at least or perhaps a great plague level event. They had people convinced that not getting vaccinated was as good as a death sentence. Governments were stockpiling massive quantities of flu remedies.
Nobody denied that the flu existed and that it was a mutation was a given. The particular mutation involved is interesting.
Note the distinct lack of mass graves, cities shut down or evacuated, auditoriums converted to medical wards, etc. etc. etc. Note how the "pandemic" went into decline even before the flu shots had a chance to become effective. Note how the overall mortality rate was a bit less than that of the typical seasonal flu.
In other words.....YAWN!
The linked summary article is so much technobabble. Slashdot is full of smart people who can handle a link to an open access journal article...
Go to http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1001034 to find out that the lack of a Lysine (K627) in the PB2 gene would normally prohibit this virus from replicating in humans, but is compensated for by the presence of a Arginine (R591) residue. These are both basic amino acids, and are located near each other on the structure. So, just a standard compensatory mutation - the sort of thing flu does all the time.
This is a nice bit of science, but it hardly explains the cause of the whole pandemic (this was a Franken-virus cobbled together from 4 other viruses). More science, less sensationalism, please!
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
...wut?
If you're going to go saying this nonsense, you could at least say it in a way that makes it sound like you didn't just shove together a bunch of random conspiracy theory (and environmental?) catchphrases as a joke.
As it is, it just looks like you've been smoking pot with your spiritual being too much.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Thank you for your technobable. :)
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Holy Cow! I work with Gene. I never thought he was capable of something like this.
Just goes to show you never really know someone.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
That's not evidence of fear mongering, it's evidence that our epidemic prevention systems are working.
Call me paranoid if you must, but I noticed that when the mass media started talking about H1N1 and stopped talking about the economic freefall we were in, guess what... The economy stopped sinking like a stone.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
And if all the people in New Orleans had been bussed out before Katrina hit, it would have been a yawner, too. Then people would have complained that the expensive evacuation wasn't worth the money and that it was all just media hype.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Is that is WAS a pandemic but the word doesn't mean what most people think. Pandemic has the connotation of something that kills a lot, but it really just means a disease that spreads a lot. It literally means "an epidemic that is geographically widespread; occurring throughout a region or even throughout the world." So you can have a harmless pandemic (as this one largely was) just as you can have an extremely fatal disease that doesn't spread much. A pandemic itself isn't scary, it is a pandemic of a disease with a high kill rate that is.
So for the people who feel like it wasn't really a pandemic, that is simply a function of the media sensationalizing a word. The disease was a pandemic in its spread, but its kill rate was exceedingly low, even lower than normal flu strains, meaning that the net harm wasn't very much.
The problem with flu is it's rapid rate of mutation, rapid spread, and high virulence. It does kill about half a million people each year, and every hundred years or so a variant will pop up that causes fatal cytokine storms in healthy people.
The recent H1N1 scare was because it is hard to predict what the flu would do in the flu season and it was unusually active during an otherwise quiet time for flu. There was actually a fairly good chance that it would be worse than the spanish flu. It's easy to criticize with perfect hindsight, but when working with incomplete data and you are up against something that has a reasonable chance of killing hundreds of millions of people...
Better be prepared for the worst case scenario, at any rate at some point a even worse variant than the Spanish flu will popup, it's just a matter of time, and we have been unusually lucky over the last century.
I read this as "Green Martian Caused 2009 H1N1 Virus Spread".... it's been a long day I guess.
your criticism is a reward in itself. environmental catch-all phase is no joke. the spirit requires no additives. random exploding/flooding/starving /burning up/ruining stuff forever/killing people conspiracy is no longer a theory. it's really happening.
It WAS and IS unjustified media fear mongering. They had everyone expecting another Spanish flu at least or perhaps a great plague level event.
Except that responsible media (including even /.) always indicated that the predictions had a wide margin of error. Of course if someone is looking for their daily dose of fear, there are always media that are happy to oblige.
In other words.....YAWN!
That's easy to say in hindsight, Mr Armchair Epidemiologist. Last year there was good reason to assume things could be far more serious.
Heh...
I am no expert at all, but from my understanding so far, the more complex an organism is (and by "organism" I mean a combination of cells), the harder it is for it to evolve. Virii are (a) relatively simple (combination of cells), and are therefore more likely to evolve/adapt than more complex organisms (say, a human being), and it is only thanks to human research that the human being is more resistant so far (thanks, mainly, to vaccines).
As far as my feeble understanding is concerned, this resembles a "sword vs shield" problem. Saying has it that the sword (the virus) wins eventually. Will it?
Must have been intelligently designed by Military intelligentsia because flu still kills 2- 5 X more in the USA than this so called Pandemic did worldwide !
A pandemic killed 60 million people. In Romania they said that an actor died of it. Later to be discovered but oddly enough not covered that he had contacted malaria from Angola where he worked as a volunteer. It was marketing. How do so many people get suckered in to such false news I do not understand. It was worse then a mascara commercial and we know too well their target audience. Cows, chicken, pigs.. What next? Raging squirrel syndrome? I don't contest that it was a mutation of a flu virus. Mutations happen on a daily basis but to call it a pandemic is a bit too much. Oh no! I'm being attacked by a squirrel holding two nuts! Heeeeeelp!
You are absolutely correct, insofar as anchors are generally made of metal instead of stone.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
I have no idea what +1, Interesting smallpox is. Presumably, it's a mutation of smallpox that has evolved the ability to post on Slashdot. In which case, we're safe. It can't spread. What's it going to reproduce with?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nobody got "bussed out" though. The drugs sit on shelves (expiring rapidly).
It's as if a tropical storm formed on the Atlantic as usual and we evacuated the entire southeast right away, continuing the evacuation even after the spotter planes told us it had broken up and become a light rain shower. A year later and we still haven't officially admitted there is no hurricane.
Thanks to that, if a real killer flu happens that really could wipe out a third of the population, everyone will yawn and nobody will get an actually necessary vaccine.
I have consistently criticized based on actual fatality figures that were known well before the stockpiling happened and before the vaccine was even available. It was perfectly possible after the first few reports to predict that it would be a fizzle (I did so and it was).
A few people with actual credentials did as well but they were shouted down by Chicken Little.
Only in the same sense as no tigers proves that my magic tiger repelling rock works.
Note how it was already in decline before the vaccine was available. That was proof that we didn't NEED to do anything. Note how most people had a very mild flu. More evidence that there wasn't anything to do.
Note how the one big preventative measure that is well proven to work, avoiding crowds, was never advised because that would mess with the commerce day/christmas shopping.
This was only a test of the Global Emergency Response System. Had this test yielded the appropriate outpouring of funding into UN coffers, I'm certain that the FUD associated with H1N1 would have been amplified accordingly. From every HR letter to other not to mention memorandums, H1N1 was touted to be a potential epidemic that was to rival the biblical death of the first born of Egypt (hence H1N1 was suppose to kill off young children en masse).
Of course, many of the early reports of young people dying were kept VERY vague, not mentioning that many of the individuals were illegal immigrants (not necessarily important for this particular matter, other than lack of historical medical histories) with pre-existing illnesses. Later on it was found out that many of the declared H1N1 diagnosis were false, and some of the deaths were not the real cause of death, just that people who died also had H1N1.
Saying that the global response system was effective in containing H1N1 from becoming a devastating plague is suspect at best. 10,000's of thousands of people die from seasonal flu every year and there is pretty much nothing the WHO can do about it, aside from offering a russian roulette vaccination regimen. I'm not criticizing vaccinations, I'm simply saying that if H1N1 was a deadly as it was touted, and as virulent as the common cold, the death toll would have been MUCH higher.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
or you could learn the definitions of the words you are using.
'virulence' is a description of how fast something spreads.
That's easy to say in hindsight, Mr Armchair Epidemiologist. Last year there was good reason to assume things could be far more serious.
You mean last year when I predicted that it wouldn't amount to anything and decried the media hype and massive waste of money? That last year?
When the initial outbreak happened in Mexico and there were an unusual number of fatalities, concern was justified. When it spread and the fatality rate fell to below normal levels for flu, there was cause to relax. When the fatality rate remained low it was time to stand down, but we didn't. There was Tamiflu and vaccines to be sold and government agencies that needed to appear relevant, so the panic continued.
I can imagine no justification for continuing to follow it as a pandemic (yes, they're not done flogging this particular dead horse).
As for the wide margin for error, it was very wide indeed wide. As wide as OMG DENTAL FLOSS WILL KILL YOU (perhaps but probably not).
That would be straight out of the repetitive redundancy department office.
a combination of four different avian and swine flu viruses that have emerged over the past 90 years, and even includes genetic residue of the 1918 pandemic virus
Forgive my ignorance, I am no microbiologist, but how does this happen? Viruses don't have sexual dimorphism so the only way for this to be true would be if each of the four different avian and swine flu viruses mentioned were a combination of all the ones that came before it. Viruses can be descended from each other but can they be descended from multiple strains without each of those being descended from each other as well? Am I missing something here? Are viruses sneakily having sex when I am not looking?
Just like killer bees and flesh-eating bacteria. I find it useful to not work myself into a frenzy over the latest media obsession...
Ya know, there already is a disease for creating zombies. Not undead per se, but the other characteristics of zombies.
Rabies spreads by biting. The only reason it won't become a pandemic in its current form is because it is totally self-destructive: the host will kill everything, including other beings with rabies, and including itself.
Now if there was something that can pacify the aggression on things already infected, then a zombie pandemic can start...
They ramped up vaccine production as fast as they possibly could, IN CASE by the time it was available, the virus would be still going gangbusters.
Luckily it wasn't, but we just don't know enough about flu to have known ahead of time, let alone guessed.
I think you're missing the big picture. The big picture is, flu vaccines take a long time to make. Yes, media fear mongers hyped up the worst case scenario, but the mass production was precisely because H1N1 was pandemic; ie, it wasn't as important if it had a high kill ratio as that it spread a lot and hence a lot of vaccines could counter the spread. As a result, a very large production of the vaccine were produced. The fact that "spotter planes told us it had broken up and become a light rain shower" is precisely why about half the vaccines weren't used. If you're looking for the media fear mongers to officially apologize, well good luck with that.
Meanwhile, the lethality of most influenza tends to be less from the flu being strong per se and more to do with people (elderly and children) having an immune system unable to cope. So, presumably the mass vaccination probably did save a good many elderly and child lives. And the pandemic status was accurate. The only thing really left is for the CDC and the WHO to officially admonish the various media fear mongers and apologize that they didn't do such earlier. I'm not really sure what you expecting though, unless you believe it's the CDC's and the WHO's job to have a PR arm to educate people that they shouldn't blindly believe everything the media might spit out, especially when it's the same jackasses spewing yet another thing to fear this week when last weeks fear didn't pan out as nearly as lethal as they made it out to be.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
There was PLENTY of notice that the flu wasn't going to be a big deal. The decline before the vaccine was actually used was just the icing on the cake.
It's also notable that even with H1N1 in decline, the vaccine was still being hyped endlessly and other supplies were still being stocked up.
It wasn't wrong to develop the vaccine, the wrong was in foisting it off on the public once it became obviously unnecessary.
The massive stockpiling of Tamiflu was a problem, especially as evidence piled up that it wasn't terribly effective for H1N1 and that overuse is already causing flu in general to adapt.
The spread was no more severe than any flu and may have been far less (it's hard to tell since any flu-like symptoms were presumed to be H1N1 for the purpose of scare mongering stats). The kill ratio was lower than normal for flu. The odds are fair that more people died driving to and from the clinic to get their flu shot than were saved by that shot.
As for what to DO about it, there's not much TO do. The horse is gone, there's no sense closing the door now. My concern is that one day, a REAL pandemic that actually kills 1 of every 3 people WILL break out and all people will think when the warnings go out is "yeah, yeah, swine flu, we're all going to die, sure". There's only so many times you can cry wolf.
As for blame though, the CDC and WHO did their share of scare mongering and when the media wanted more scary soundbites, they cheerfully complied.
It WAS and IS unjustified media fear mongering. They had everyone expecting another Spanish flu at least
NO ONE expects the Spanish flu!!!
Close, insofar as they stopped talking about the economic problems (and the wrongheaded keynsian buffoonery...). Not so much in that the economic problems ceased, or that it was their goal, though.
They hyped it up to sell the health care bill that no one had, at that time, actually read a significant fraction of.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
that factory farming, where pigs are crammed close together to cut costs contributed to the gene mutation and spreading of the Swine Flu.
LOL, just LOL!
Pandemic is a term describing how widely the disease spread, it has nothing to do with number of people killed.
This clearly was a pandemic, since it's worldwide, but mostly harmless one.
Did I miss something?
Did I sleep through 2009?
.
- aqk
F U
> They ramped up vaccine production as fast as they possibly could, IN CASE by the time it was available, the virus would be still going gangbusters.
But they were too late. Swine flue peaked after the return to school in late summer (no surprise there), and the vaccine was not available until December or January in most places. Had this flu been serious, we would all be dead now (well, not all, but 10% or so).
So this was an epic fail on ever so many levels. Time for a tax on pharmacology companies to pay for this.
Clearly it is an Interesting Smallpox from Treasure Table GG, found in Module HV-1, The Temple of Elemental Cold.
I've noticed your sig before, but it's especially pertinent with this post!
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
I agree. Also relevant is this from the Bad Science blog: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/parmageddon/ . In particular, people seem to misunderstand risk:
They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is.
It's the same thing with Y2K - even here, you see people claiming it as a myth or waste of time. The risks were there, and indeed, the fact that little happened is a credit to those people who worked fixing the problems. The only ones making ludicrous claims were the media - the same media who now cite the example as "experts make claims that turn out to be completely wrong".
No it was not, you moron.
Since you seem to have forgotten, the mostality rate when it fist hit the scene was 50%.
That right, half tghe people that got it initial died. The correct organization behave exactly as they should of with those number.
Not doing what they did would have been irresponsible. You can't wait until it becomes a pandemic to start preparing, because then it's too late.
YAWN? did you know that there where hospitals so fuull of very sick people they where goining to start turning people away?
How about the fact that the huge push to get people vaccinated severally limited it's spread?
I won't even get into the fact that your 'yawn' still means THOUSANDS dead.
YOU are what s wrong with the world. You and people like you. You stupid ass binary thinkers. In the end it wasn't as bad as it could of been, therefore is was nothing.
The people who modded you interesting are ignorant fucks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No it was not, you moron.
Oh yeah? Well your a DOODIEHEAD so NYAH NYAH NYAH!
The flu* has a long history of re-serging.
The fact is you know NOTHING about the flu and how it behaves and that has made you suffer from arrogance from ignorance.
To the people who actually stupid this stuff, you are a complete buffoon. A buffoon you tried top make everyone around them as ignorant as they are. People like you need to learn to think.
The CDC and WHO acted exactly as you want them to. You might be too stupid to realize that, but they did. and no, there was no fear monger. They answered everything factually and properly as well as gave people the tool to find out information themselves.
*all types.
here isa good place to start:
http://moremark.squarespace.com/quackcast-list-mp3/
Episodes 20, 34, 35, 42
Yes he is sarcastic and doesn't stand you irrational thinking, but he is an expert, and he does site sources. So you can actual relieve yourself if that incredible burden of ignorance.
The bad thing about ignorance is that it's a burden for everyone, not just the ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://moremark.squarespace.com/
Infectious disease doc who also makes a Zaphod reference in his FAQ.
I highly recommend his podcast. ep 20, 34,35,42 discusses the flu, but all his stuff is good, and he sites sources.
The world needs more Mark Crislip.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The one the spread to every continent. The same one that filled up most of our hospitals. The same won that was a nats eyebrow from causing hospitals from turning people away. The one where fast action among the CDC, WHO and global governments help cut short. The one that killed people who went to PAX, The one that even though the fast action of a lot of global organizations should be praised for stopping short be instead get ignorant fucks complaining that is was all about nothing. Like slamming on the breaks just i time to not hot a tree then these assholes come out of the wood work and bitch that nothing happened therefor breaking was not need.
That pandemic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why do I seriously suspect that this will actually get written into a D&D module now...?!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I remember the media saying that other pandemic flus had peaked twice, once in the fall and once later. So if that had happened, it could have helped.
Anyway, I don't think we physically have the ability to manufacture flu vaccines much faster than we did. It's grown in eggs, sloowwly. If anything it was a good wake-up call that we can't expect to be protected by a vaccine in the event of a really deadly epidemic.
That is so 2009
Vaccines aren't about protecting individuals; you have to think of it at the population level. If more than X% of the population gets vaccinated, the percent of the population that gets the disease goes way down. So the fact that you didn't get the flu last year may may be attributable to other people getting the vaccine (not to downplay the importance of personal hygiene).