Monday, April 27, 2009
Swine Flu anyone?
Such wonderful times: economic crisis, wars, unemployment, crappy roads, and now a potential swine flu pandemic. Why am I still reading the news?
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Our little Family
A gal from Germany, a guy from California, another BYU love story, 1 bunny named Killer, 2 little girls, 3 degrees, 4 bikes, books in every corner, drawings on the wall, music and dancing, vegetable garden on the balcony, chocolate and prosciutto, pitched tents in the living rooms, cloth diapers in the bathroom, laundry piles in the bedroom, unvaccumed stair way, unironed clothes, lots of hugs, a bunch of tears, some heart ache, some fights, some disappointments, much joy, lots of traveling, nightmares and night cuddles, trips to the ER - swearing included, diarrhea disasters in public bathrooms, marathons, bike rides, prayers, faith, hope and hopefully some charity. Happiness.
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11 comments:
Why am I still studying for these tests I have tomorrow!?
Henry
This stuff gets me excited. Well not the economic crisis and the wars - but swine flu does. Influenza is a fascinating virus, and a great tool to use against those who discredit evolution. Actually, the world is due for a good flu pandemic as they seem to occur approximately every 40 years and the last one was in 1968.
Troy
well, I'm glad you're excited. I'm still/again reading your flu book you lent to me. I'm a little freaked though. I don't wanna die. I don't want Henry to die - and he tends to be so sickly. :(
so, what do the experts say about this swine flu stuff?
This outbreak is a flu that is part pig flu, part human flu, and part bird flu. It's not uncommon for different virus strains or strains that are endemic in different kinds of animals to undergo reassortment of genetic material. Flu has two proteins to which humans generate antibodies. The HA protein and the NA protein, both are proteins expressed on the surface of the virus particle. The current outbreak is of a virus with the HA gene of a virus that has been circulating in American pigs since 1999 and the NA gene is one that has been circulating in Asian and European pigs recently. One theory is that the European virus was brought to Mexico by migratory birds (birds carry, without disease, all known Influenza A virus strains) or travelers and then combined with the North American strain circulating in pigs before jumping over to farm workers. Flu viruses are constantly mixing, usually in pigs, because their genome is made up of eight separate segments of RNA. When two different strains happen to infect the same cell the way the genomic fragments get packaged into new particles is completely random so you can get avian flu segments packaging with human segments to create a virus that is part bird flu and part human flu.
Anyway, it turns out that we have no immunity to this new swine flu strain from past exposure or from vaccination. The good news is this flu strain is perfectly susceptible (for now) to our antiviral drugs and there have been no deaths among 20 confirmed cases in the US. In fact, only one case required brief hospitalization.
Sorry this was so long but viruses are my specialty and I could go on and on about influenza.
Troy
Well, I partially posted this topic with you in mind Troy. I'd love to hear anything you have to say on this topic as things develop more. I mean, how many people have their personal immunology/crazy diseases experts friends?
Well Troy... I for one do not want 6% of people who get this virus to die. I'm voting no to a pandemic. There is nothing exciting about wiping out the world's population.
Pandemic doesn't necessarily mean lots of people are gonna die, it just means lots of people are gonna get infected.
Since this post was meant for me allow me to pontificate further. The CDC has now confirmed 64 cases of swine flu in the US. Still no deaths though the number of hospitalizations is now more than one. And the first confirmed case of infection in an individual who did NOT travel to Mexico has now popped up. This has prompted the WHO to raise the alert level to Phase 4 (out of a possible 5 I think) meaning that there is human-to-human transmission. Pandemics will not occur without human-to-human transmission and this is opposed to animal-to-human transmission only. The WHO is not yet calling this a full-blown pandemic but things are starting to lean that way.
Now, I don't get excited over people getting really sick either but you've got to stand in awe at what nature can do. Influenza does some very unique things and its biology is fascinating. Nothing like a flu outbreak to make you remember how small humans are compared to nature sometimes.
Oh, and one really interesting thing about this virus is that it seems to be infecting healthy young adults and sparing the frail elderly and the young. This was exactly what happened in 1918 (global mortality estimates range from 25 million to 100 million for the 1918 pandemic but there were factors in play in 1918 that don't exist currently). Nobody realistically thinks we're in for another 1918 pandemic yet but it's unusual for an outbreak to infect our demographic rather than kids and old people.
Wow, those were some interesting facts, thanks for sharing!
Fran--I posted an article on Facebook about this from one of my favorite health sites. I think it points out a lot of good information and that an overreaction can make things worse. Take a look...
Why am I still reading the news? That's exactly how I feel...
I was pretty freaked out about swine flu, too, until I actually got it. It's really not any different from any other flu I've ever had, except that my family and I aren't allowed to leave the house except to visit the doctor and the pharmacy. Otherwise I'd be eating a lot more ice cream.
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