Fox
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Never underestimate the odds.
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Re:H5N1...Are we all doomed?
« Reply #2 on: 2007-03-06 15:17:45 » |
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Quote from: Bass on 2007-02-21 14:52:45 I've been hearing a little too much about H5N1 influenza to feel comfortable. Does anyone think this will be a big one? Maybe as bad as the pandemic in 1918? Or do you think we'll be prepared?
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I share your concern; I weyken that in the near future it is quite possible (perhaps even plausible) that we shall see avian flu enter an antigenic shift (Reassortment) with human flu - an evolution and consequence which would most likely result in a global pandemic, a theory and prediction which is shared by Dr. Robert Webster, one of the worlds leading avian influenza experts and virologists who has spent more than 50 years studying influenza and was the first to both affirm and promulgate a nexus between avian and human flu.
Yet through antigenic drift, H5N1 has already mutated into many other pathogenic varieties - though all still belonging to the same genotype Z of the influenza. The only thing seeming to prevent another flu pandemic is the apparent absense of – yet at the same time which is required to bring us into a flu pandemic - an antigenic shift between both human and avian flu strains, cultivated into a single mammalian cellular strain – most likely a pig. Pigs are not all that much disimilar in their genetic make-up from humans which makes them susceptible to the human flu; and since their enviroment usually (in many areas) includes birds such as ducks and chickens this makes the likilhood of catching avian flu all the more probable.
At the present time we are currently in a pandemic alert period of Phase 3: Self limiting, which still gives us time to prepare in the case of a future pandemic. If the pandemic period ever did reach Phase 6: Pandemic, I would predict that it would result in a disaster greater then the spanish flu of 1918, if left unchecked and without sufficient flu vaccine (Tamiflu) to go around - given that global and cultral transmission would be far more accessable to the flu today then it was 89 years ago. And today, with a world population of 6.5 billion (more than three times that of 1918) a pandemic flu strain - adaptable to humans - would likely spread at lest around three times faster.
Of course I’m not saying that this is the end of life as we know it, rather that we should be prepared and aware of what is actually happening.
My suggestion: Hope and act in the best way you can and prepare for the worst.
I would highly recommend looking over the following:
Regards,
Fox
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