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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.
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.
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.
News to me too.. I'd completely forgotten about it..
As was Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth, Y2K, Terrorists, Avian Flu, and a half dozen other incidents in the past couple decades.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Viruses usually search and destroy. A successful virus basically means it can reproduce and spread. Something that infects a host but doesn't kill it would be more like a parasite.
It's the physical structure and method of breeding that makes it a virus or a parasite. The common cold is a virus and it definitely doesn't kill in most cases.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
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.
As was Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth, Y2K, Terrorists, Avian Flu, and a half dozen other incidents in the past couple decades.
Y2K didn't pan out? Sonofabitch...I guess I can leave my bomb shelter.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I was thinking the same thing.
I didn't get either vaccine last year (that is, neither H1N1 nor the regular one), and I haven't caught either flu. Basic sanitary practices like washing my hands when I use the bathroom and refusing to share drinks seem to work in today's world.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
All that media hype *did* have an effect... more people were vaccinated, more people stayed home when sick, more schools were closed during local outbreaks, etc.
Yes, I agree it was over-hyped. Mostly because the media corps knew that it wold sell copy and sell ads.
But you'd be pretty damn hard-pressed to show that the hype didn't save lives and improve productivity.
Another note:
No. The figures reported in that report are minimum figures. The CDC reported 8533 deaths confirmed due to H1N1 in the US; if you check that number with the CDC, they state that the actual number is likely FAR higher.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Thank you for your technobable. :)
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I was thinking the exact same thing, so I looked it up:
"The World Health Organization (WHO) has produced a six-stage classification that describes the process by which a novel influenza virus moves from the first few infections in humans through to a pandemic. This starts with the virus mostly infecting animals, with a few cases where animals infect people, then moves through the stage where the virus begins to spread directly between people, and ends with a pandemic when infections from the new virus have spread worldwide.
"A disease or condition is not a pandemic merely because it is widespread or kills many people; it must also be infectious. For instance, cancer is responsible for many deaths but is not considered a pandemic because the disease is not infectious or contagious."
So "pandemic" doesn't just mean something contagious that's occurring worldwide, otherwise the common cold would have been classified as pandemic throughout recorded history.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
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.
Well no, not even the bubonic plague is technically gone - but its definately not in the pandemic situation anymore. And H1N1 never should have made it to pandemic - it was less lethal than the common flu and only garnered such attention because it was new and we didn't know how profound it was going to be.
With that whole scare tactic, they were capable of getting millions of people to buy into this vaccine for a disease that hadn't fully been researched. I, nor anyone in my office or family went and got the vaccine that was paid for by our Canadian Health Care. However, certain Canadians were asking if they could recieve their vaccination needle to sell in the states - after all they are paying for the vaccination in taxes - should they get to decide how to use it?
Anyways, only 1 person I know (and I know quite a few people) ever got swine flu, my cousin out in Vancouver, and she is alive and well and only had like 1 week of symptoms. Its about as "here" as it ever was before.
Now, whether thats because a lot of people got vaccinated, or because it was never a big issue to begin with, all depends on how much tinfoil you are wearing on your head.
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.
Anyways, only 1 person I know (and I know quite a few people) ever got swine flu, my cousin out in Vancouver, and she is alive and well and only had like 1 week of symptoms.
Only one person I know (and I know quite a few people) ever got swine flu too. A cousin of a friend of mine, and he died. He was in otherwise good condition medically. They say it hit young adults hard though...
It's also possible that a number of people around you were vaccinated, which would have decreased your risk of exposure. Just a thought.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I read this as "Green Martian Caused 2009 H1N1 Virus Spread".... it's been a long day I guess.
No kidding! Far fewer people died of H1N1 than died of conventional yearly flu - by several orders of magnitude.
I was very surprised at how many people *do* die of conventional flu every year.
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...
The difference between a virus and a parasite is that a virus attaches itself to a cell and alters the cell so that the cell produces more viruses. Parasites are living organisms in their own right and reproduce in various ways on their own. The difference has nothing to do with whether the disease kills.
In fact, viruses that kill rapidly don't stay around in the population for very long because dead people don't generally walk around and pass the disease to other people. Pathogenicity beyond a certain point is counterproductive. Thus, although most viruses would kill in the absence of an immune system. They also wouldn't spread very far, and the ones that survived would presumably be weakened strains that were not as virulent. Thus, in the long term, you'd probably end up with a similar case fatality rate as you have with viruses now.
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I was thinking the same thing.
I didn't get either vaccine last year (that is, neither H1N1 nor the regular one), and I haven't caught either flu. Basic sanitary practices like washing my hands when I use the bathroom and refusing to share drinks seem to work in today's world.
Well I got both vaccines and I didn't catch either one, so they must've worked.
Thing is, I have as much proof I was exposed and protected by the vaccines as you have that you were exposed and protected by washing your hands. Which is to say, none. Preventative measures are invisible if they work and invisible if they're never tested, which makes anecdotes even less useful than normal.
But I gotta say... washing hands just after using the bathroom? Maybe if you work from home, but I'd at least add before meals or even snacking to that list. (Edges away from semi-public keyboard used for work.)
That tactic will not work for a large portion of the population. The existence of our school system means that airborne diseases will pass through large portions of the population. Particularly in winter months, you are taking virtually all of the minor population and packing them into tight quarters for long periods of time. That is without even factoring in the fact that school kids are unlikely to take the basic sanitary practices that you do. Sometimes they are not even allowed to.
So, your tactic might work for you, and if it does, I say keep it up, but unless you are prepared to take some drastic measures like shutting down the public school system, it won't work for most people. I don't get flue vaccines either. Mostly because at places I have worked, I have noticed a trend that the more people getting flue shots, the higher the rate of people with the flue. That and since I both telecommute and home school, it is really easy for me and my family to avoid people that are really sick.
Don't forget chicken pox and shingles. The current marketing on those is that they are serious killers.
Are you by any chance selling tiger-repellent rocks?
You are absolutely correct, insofar as anchors are generally made of metal instead of stone.
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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...
search "The Times of India" for "swine flu"
You will find:
A: that there has been a 40% increase in swine flu cases recently.
B:that it requires 2 tests to confirm that a particular swab is swine flu rather than ordinary flu.
C: that the first test to establish that it is flu and not a common cold is cheap; but that the test to identify swine flu costs up to 5000 rupees (~$100)
D: that the second test is frequently not done and the results from the first test are assumed to be swine flu; which leads to a lot of false positives.
E: that some of the WHO experts had (have/) ties to pharma companies
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).
The 2009 H1N1 must have mutated at a whole other level to be that resistant.
Must have? I find it surprising that so many people believe this was a random event when the first reported case of the
2009 N1H1 was about 80 miles from a research complex for Gilead Sciences (the company that developed Tamiflu) and one of
the researchers looking at 2009 N1H1 stated it was almost identical to a flu virus they'd been working on at the lab.
Production of 400 million capsules at around $12 each is a very big incentive to release a virus.
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?
The largest risk factor for seasonal flu (and probably H1N1) is exposure to unvaccinated children under the age of 7. If you don't have kids and you're colleagues are smart enough to stay home when they are sick, your risk of getting it is pretty small even without a vaccination.
If you were alive before 1978 and had previous exposure to H1N1 or had the 1970s "swine flu" vaccine, you probably had some immunity. Depending upon the strength of the immunity you might not have developed the disease or developed a case so mild that it was indistinguishable from a mild cold.
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It's not gone yet?
Influenza is seasonal. It's currently flu season in the southern hemisphere. You probably live in the northern hemisphere.
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The 2009 H1N1 must have mutated at a whole other level to be that resistant.
Must have? I find it surprising that so many people believe this was a random event when the first reported case of the
2009 N1H1 was about 80 miles from a research complex for Gilead Sciences (the company that developed Tamiflu) and one of
the researchers looking at 2009 N1H1 stated it was almost identical to a flu virus they'd been working on at the lab.
Production of 400 million capsules at around $12 each is a very big incentive to release a virus.
Citation required!
(and please not from some whack job conspiracy site)
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Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
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...
it was less lethal than the common flu
Only if you were over the age of 32 (i.e. you had experienced H1N1 before 1978). This thing killed a few thousand kids in the US. It's hard to figure out how many cases there would have been without the vaccination program, but the vaccinations probably prevented a few thousand deaths, prevented 30,000 serious but non-fatal complication, and about $30 billion in sick days.
And H1N1 never should have made it to pandemic
Pandemic relates primarily to the geographic area the flu is found in, the rate of spread in those areas and to new areas. I'm not sure whether it kills old people is on the list of criteria.
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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.
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that factory farming, where pigs are crammed close together to cut costs contributed to the gene mutation and spreading of the Swine Flu.
So "pandemic" doesn't just mean something contagious that's occurring worldwide, otherwise the common cold would have been classified as pandemic throughout recorded history.
Right. It just means something contagious that is spreading widely (doesn't have to be worldwide, just a very large area).
Things like common cold* are not classified as pandemic, because they've already stabilized. It's already present in the whole world, and not spreading into new populations any more. If cold cases would suddenly start to skyrocket, then maybe... or if cold was eradicated from large areas and did a comeback.
*) Common cold might not count as a pandemic even if it did meet the spreading criteria, since it doesn't have a single causative agent - it's just an umbrella term for a wide variety of mild respiratory tract infections.
> 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.
It's a media hype bullshit machine, which overrules Pandemic. Look at the spread statistics. Hell, look at the death rate: almost nobody. This is where people pop up and go, "But wait! 30,000 people died! You call that nobody?!" Yes, 10 months in it finally made its 30,000th confirmed fatality; meanwhile the regular old flu had passed that 2 months into its own spread, and without 90%+ of its fatalities being wholly because idiots went to the emergency room with it (and subsequently got other respiratory illnesses). Seems that H1N1 "Swine Flu" doesn't kill you so easily, whereas H1N1 "Brisbane" can kill you without waiting for a Pneumonia infection.
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I got the flu and had a throat cold for 2 days, in which I felt like shit; then on the third day I vegetated. Seriously, passed out, woke up for 5 minutes to desperately seek water and a sugar cube (my body was screaming that it needed raw energy, I was too weak to eat), passed back out. This happened a dozen times in one day.
The next day I still felt like shit. Managed to eat. Around 11am I took a shower. At noon, I felt like I'd got hit by a truck. You know, the truck isn't still hitting you, but you're pretty banged up after the fact.
That's the flu? Annoyance. I took 2 days off work to masturbate to porn and make sure there was no risk of infecting my coworkers.
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I got the flu and it was awesome. First time I'd been sick in... well.. I'm 25, I was 24, so IN MY LIFE. Nothing's ever laid me in bed for serious before. NOTHING. I was out for almost 24 hours!
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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".
SHOULD. HAVE. What the fuck monkey?!
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", it won't work for most people"
Also could of said:
", it will kill thousands of people."
" I have noticed a trend that the more people getting flue shots, the higher the rate of people with the flue. "
I guarantee you thats confirmation bias.
Not getting vaccinated make you a danger to others. Stop being stupid. And yes, I literally mean you are being stupid, as in behaving as if you are an uneducated simpleton. Stop it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ah arrogance from ignorance. Nice example. Here are sever definitions, note death and severity isn't a factor.
"Pandemic: An epidemic (a sudden outbreak) that becomes very widespread and affects a whole region, a continent, or the world."
Dictionary.com
" occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population "
"What is an influenza pandemic?
A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease. An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity. With the increase in global transport, as well as urbanization and overcrowded conditions in some areas, epidemics due to a new influenza virus are likely to take hold around the world, and become a pandemic faster than before. WHO has defined the phases of a pandemic to provide a global framework to aid countries in pandemic preparedness and response planning. Pandemics can be either mild or severe in the illness and death they cause, and the severity of a pandemic can change over the course of that pandemic."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
I've got to say, these viruses are cunning little fuckers aren't they?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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.
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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.
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H1N1 influenza viruses have been out of circulation in the human population since about 1978, but have been circulating in the bird and swine populations. That's a lot of virus generations in which to acquire modifications.
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Yes, keep getting you info on what women like from Jersey Shore~
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Actually, wide spread infection is when pandemic means.
The initial mortality rate was 50%. That was the cause for alarm.
There when many thousands of deaths. I don't know about you, but I don't like seeing thousands die.
It's impact was reduced because of that action. Even with that, we where on the precipice of disaster. Hospitals where just starting to put in there emergence procedures for turning people away when the flu stated subsiding.
Increased care, hygiene, vaccination saved us, barely. We were also lucky that the initial mortality was a spike in probability and not the norm.
Normal I don't respond to AC; however people ignorance of vaccines, and knowledge on how disease behave is killing people.
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This may be a virulent virus, but to assume you could cause a pandemic with a release into humans at a single site seems a bit silly. It's more likely that the researcher was studying avian or swine H1N1 from local animals, in which case it would have been virtually identical. BTW, "working on" does not mean "genetically modifying."
Given the distribution of humans and pigs, I wonder what the chances of the first human case in someone who is within range of medical doctors capable of identifying a virus and is also within 80 miles of a pharmaceutical research lab. They are probably pretty good, since most of the world's population probably lives within 80 miles of a pharmaceutical research lab and you probably need to send the specimen to a pharmaceutical research lab or a research hospital in order for the virus to be identified.
But the conspiracy idea is far more fun and frightening, so carry on.
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The question of vaccinations is not an open and shut case. The chicken pox vaccine is a perfect example of where it can actually INCREASE the danger to recipient. Claiming that vaccines are inherently good is about as logical as claiming that they are always bad.
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.
Don't forget chicken pox and shingles. The current marketing on those is that they are serious killers.
I understand from my 80 something year old great grandmother that shingles is painful, but not a killer(you just wish you were dead).
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Your 80 year old grandmother is correct. That doesn't stop commercials for the vaccine from claiming that it will kill you. Remember, that just a generation ago, chicken pox was also considered a nothing more than a major childhood inconvenience. Now, people will accuse you of being a killer if you don't give your kid the vaccine that is likely to increase their risk from the disease. For what it is worth, while the chicken pox vaccine seems like are really bad idea, the shingles vaccine seems like a pretty good one. Actually, for an adult that hasn't had chicken pox, the vaccine is a good idea, because they are already past the point of it being a minor illness.
Now for the tinfoil hat time... It give me pause that a new formulation of vaccines can be whipped up in Star Trek time to battle the wildly mutating flu virus, but they cannot seem to produce a vaccine for Herpes from what they already have with the chicken pox vaccine. I am far more concerned about the life long impact that Herpes has on peoples lives than I am about have a flu like disease for a week while you are a kid. While the temporary nature of the chicken pox vaccine will push peoples infectable time to later in life when it is more dangerous to catch the disease, Herpes doesn't get more dangers as you enter adulthood (which when you would be most likely to catch it anyways). While a chicken pox vaccine that last 5 years is more harm than good, a Herpes vaccine that lasts 5 years would be awesome.
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).