Tests Show That Deadly New Flu Could Spread Among People

An anonymous reader writes in with another news story about how the bird flu may wipe us out. "A new bird flu that has killed 36 people in China can spread from ferret to ferret through the air. A laboratory test showing airborne transmission of the H7N9 avian influenza virus between the animals has raised fears that the virus is poised to become a human pandemic. The H7N9 avian influenza virus emerged suddenly at the end of February and has infected 131 people. A few patients may have caught the virus from other infected people, but no evidence has emerged that H7N9 can readily transmit from human to human."

Comments

More ridiculous sensationalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The editor shamelessly says that the bird flu "may wipe us out", yet it has killed 36 out of 131 known cases -- hardly enough to wipe anything out -- and the quote in the actual summary says "no evidence has emerged that H7N9 can readily transmit from human to human."

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[clm1970]

Exactly FUD. Ferret != Human.and Conditions ferrets in != usual human conditions. There’s no guarantee the virus will spread similarly from person to person, says Ana Fernandez-Sesma, a viral immunologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In the experiment, ferrets are together for hours with forced airflow under temperature and humidity conditions that favor viral transmission, she says. “I don’t think this is what happens in real life.”

Re: More ridiculous sensationalism

[SteveFoerster]

No kidding! I mean, have you ever SEEN a virus? Of course not, they're way too small, say those "scientists". How convenient, right? ~

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this is pretty serious. Most of the people who were infected became critically ill and the method of death was due to sepsis, respiratory distress, or organ failure. Contrast this with SARS where only the very young or very old became critically ill. This new virus also has twice the fatality rate of SARS and can be spread by animals we use for food.

Your snark is unwarranted. Just because the number is low right now doesn't mean that it is stable or controlled. And the research on ferrets was designed to determine if it was plausible to spread from human to human. If the virus can spread from ferrets in the air, it is entirely plausible that the same applies to humans.

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[alexander_686]

Not exactly FUD. Think of it as a snowball that might turn into a avalanche.
      A 25% kill rate is nothing to sneeze at.
      Ferret are the best animal model we have – and there are open questions on how it was transmitted.
      And, most importantly, there is the question on how this virus would change it if went wide.

A virus needs to balance out 2 factors from a evolutionary standpoint. First, the more copies of itself it turns out the better chance it while have to spread, while the more copies it turns out the more likely it will kill the host so no more copies will be turned out.

If this virus went wide, the more virulent versions would dominate, which means the death toll would be higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virulence#Evolution

Remember to wash your hands and sneeze into your sleeve everybody! (I am not stocking up on antivirals yet.)

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[AK Marc]

In the experiment, ferrets are together for hours with forced airflow under temperature and humidity conditions that favor viral transmission, she says. “I don’t think this is what happens in real life.”

She obviously doesn't take mass transit.

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[AK Marc]

It doesn't have 25% kill rate. Of those admitted to hospitals, it killed 25% The other million who got it just stayed home, knowing the flu isn't treatable. Much like the swine flu was overblown. I actually got the real swine flu (from a trip to So Cal). It wasn't that bad. I've had worse flus. I also got flu-based pneumonia from China once. Bacterial pneumonia can be treated. Viral flu can't. The issue is the people that get secondary infections and don't seek treatment. That was what lead to the swine flu initial fatality rates. All flus in the past 20 years have been initially 25% fatal or so, eventually returning to the historical flu levels of under 1%. 25% is 24.9% error.

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[NFN_NLN]

Similar to the method used to ban natural root beer. They banned Sassafras because rats injected with safrole oil developed cancer.
Turns out they injected them with pure safrole... I did the calculations before and it was the equivalent of drinking something like 72 root beers everyday for 3 years. I can't remember the exact number because it was beyond the realm of sanity.

"Safrole is regarded by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be a weak carcinogen in rats,[4] and considered by the European Commission on Health and consumer protection to be genotoxic and carcinogenic.[5] It occurs naturally in a variety of spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper and herbs such as basil. In that role, safrole, like many naturally occurring compounds, may have a small but measurable ability to induce cancer in rodents. Despite this, the effects in humans were estimated by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to be similar to risks posed by breathing indoor air or drinking municipally supplied water.[6] In the United States, it was once widely used as a food additive in root beer, sassafras tea, and other common goods, but was banned by the FDA after its carcinogenicity in rats was discovered. Today, safrole is also banned for use in soap and perfumes by the International Fragrance Association."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safrole

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[ShanghaiBill]

It doesn't have 25% kill rate. Of those admitted to hospitals, it killed 25%

Furthermore, as a virus spreads through a population, there is strong selective pressure to become less lethal, but more contagious. A dead victim is no longer spreading the virus. If the virus can infect someone without killing them, and even without making them very sick, then the victim will go about their business and spread the virus widely. So when a virus first makes the animal->human jump, it may have a high percentage death rate, but the percentage death rate will quickly drop as the virus evolves and adapts to its new host.

There are exceptions. For instance the black death that wiped out 30% of Europe in the 1300s didn't become less virulent. But that is because its primary host was rodents, not humans, and there is evidence that it became less lethal to rodents as it spread.

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[icebike]

What the GP said is generally true.

Agents (virus or bacteria) that kill 100 percent of those it infects do not last long, and generally do not spread far.
It is a counter productive evolutionary path for infective agents.

Therefore, the tendency is to become less deadly in order to spread wider. Its not like there is any conscious thought involved
here its just that those agents that are totally deadly tend to get buried or burned with their victims, whereas the less deadly
versions spread far and wide due to the mobility of their hosts.

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[Sardaukar86]

Hyperbole is not a very good debate tool. And calling an entire field of research 'bullshit' tends to make whatever valid logic or reason in your arguments get totally ignored.

Oh hell, I thought those were the *rules* here!

Re:More ridiculous sensationalism

[jamesh]

What the GP said is generally true.

Agents (virus or bacteria) that kill 100 percent of those it infects do not last long, and generally do not spread far. It is a counter productive evolutionary path for infective agents.

Therefore, the tendency is to become less deadly in order to spread wider. Its not like there is any conscious thought involved here its just that those agents that are totally deadly tend to get buried or burned with their victims, whereas the less deadly versions spread far and wide due to the mobility of their hosts.

A virus that kills 100 percent of those it infects will do just fine as long as it makes you a bit sneezy and coughy and contagious but not too sick for a while first. Something like HIV, when untreated, results in the death of most of its victims, but there is plenty of opportunity for it to spread before this happens.

Hey editors

[93 Escort Wagon]

Just a friendly bit of constructive criticism... if you'd just read the entire summary, you'd have found out that the quote taken from the actual story pretty much directly contradicts both the sensationalistic title and the sensationalistic lead-in.

You don't have to read the articles; but please, at least glance at the summary that was submitted.

Still not worried.

[dicobalt]

I am not a ferret.

Wait Until The Wolf Flu

[Scarletdown]

The flu to watch out for will be one discovered to be carried by wolves. You will know it by the symptoms of the wolves' eyes getting all weepy and the infected wolves whimpering and crying constantly. It will be quite ironic that the flu that will finally get us will be the Crying Wolf Flu that everyone will ignore due to so many alarmist warnings of other strains of flu over the years that ended up not being such a big worldwide threat after all.

Just stop, please

[WillyWanker]

Please stop teasing me with talk of a massive population-thinning plague this planet desperately needs. It gets my hopes up, only to later be dashed by hearing only a few dozen people ultimately die. Disappointing to say the least.

Re:Just stop, please

[jamesh]

Have you checked yourself into the nearest psychiatric facility to help deal with these genocidal tendencies and impulses?

Because you need to.

Now.

The _only_ way humanity is going to survive is if very soon there are a lot less people on the planet, or if we turn the comfort level _way_ down. And when a president says "the american way of life is not negotiable" or something like that, you know the latter ain't gonna happen. The way we are living is unsustainable. Hoping for a plague to wipe everyone out certainly sounds like insanity, but no more so than the alternative.

And anyway, psych facilities are mostly filled with people who are a danger to themselves. People who are a danger to others are put in prison. Or government.

The end of the world

[blogagog]

The older I get, the more I realize that there are very many people in the world who just don't feel comfortable unless there is some horrible world-ending danger looming over mankind. And it's usually wildly overblown. Here's a short list of all of the things that are supposed to kill me - nuclear war, nuclear power, the end of the ozone, the end of the rain forests, global warming, and pandemics, just to name a few. I'm sure I left out a ton of false armageddons from that list. Overfishing, fertilizers, the end of oil and gas, and clear cutting forests are also supposed not to kill, but to cause us irreparable harm some time between 50 years ago and 'just around the corner'. You can only cry wolf so many times before no one believes you. I'm getting so cynical, I may take up smoking.

Re:The end of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because there's a bunch of shit doesn't mean that shit don't stink. There may be some stunted souls as you describe, but their comfort has little to do with reality - only their feelings about it. For you to dismiss the message because you don't like some of the people who carry it is frankly stupid.

It's not necessary for any of the things you list to be world-ending. It's only necessary that separately and in combination that the effects of them impinge on things as they are; any one of them might be deleterious. In combination...?

It's you, I think, paying attention to the chicken littles rather than the science that may be the disconnect.

Stupid Title and then stupid article

[Nyder]

I saw the title and said to myself, "No shit flu can spread from person to person."

Then they talk about "bird" flu and say it spreads from ferret to ferret. I've had a public school education, so maybe I missed the day where they told us ferrets were birds and not mammals.

Re:Stupid Title and then stupid article

[NoKaOi]

I saw the title and said to myself, "No shit flu can spread from person to person."

Then they talk about "bird" flu and say it spreads from ferret to ferret. I've had a public school education, so maybe I missed the day where they told us ferrets were birds and not mammals.

The connection with ferrets is that ferrets and humans share the same "human influenza" virus and can pass it on to each other. So, that means that if ferrets can get this type of influenza and pass it on, there is a reasonable probability that humans can too. That doesn't mean this is an "OMG were all gonna die!!!" sort of thing, it just means that this particular test shows a reasonable probably that humans could spread the virus from each other, and points out that the test were done under ideal (ideal to the virus) conditions.

Frankly I don't think the title is overly sensationalistic, nor is the quoted part of the summary, but the part "how the bird flu may wipe us out" is sensationalistic, inaccurate, and the editor who put it in there should be fired or sent over to Fox News.

This just in...

[UltraZelda64]

...there exists a virus that can reproduce and spread from one host to another. What an amazing scientific discovery!

Tests Show That Deadly New Flu Could Spread Among People

Something tells me that they're using the term "deadly" just for sensationalism as usual, in the same way that they're making it seem like such a big deal as if it's breaking news that a virus is capable of spreading from human to human...

I can only hope

[DaveV1.0]

I just hope it only wipes out the people who write these kinds of sensationalistic articles.

H7 doesn't have a history of causing pandemics

[jmichaelg]

In 2003 when a bird flu was sweeping through Asia, Maurice Hilleman, a 20th century virologist who created more vaccines than all other virologists combined, said it would not turn into a pandemic. He turned out to be right: the pandemic didn't happen. During his career, Hilleman noticed that the flu pandemics have all been been associated with H1, H2 and H3 hemoglutens. The other 14 hemogluten groups, H4 through H17, haven't been associated with pandemics. Hemogluten is a protein that enables the virus to attach to the throat, and the flu virus has 17 different variants, numbered H1, H2, ...H17.

The other thing Hilleman noticed was that each of the flu pandemics has been separated from its former instance by 68 years. H2 caused pandemics in 1889 and 1957. H3 caused pandemics in 1900 and 1968 and H1 caused pandemics in 1918 and 1986. Based on that pattern, Hilleman thought the next flu pandemic would occur in 2025 when most people who were alive during the H2 1957 pandemic have died.

A key difference between the 1957 instance and the 2025 instance is the fact that the US no longer has any company willing to manufacture vaccines here - they're all overseas. Hilleman spotted the 1957 outbreak before anyone else did and bulldozed the design and manufacture of an effective vaccine in a matter of months. He knew the manufacturers personally and was able to coordinate them into gearing up the necessary production. A lot of what he did then would be impossible today given the FDA's increased power.