Gene Mutation Caused 2009 H1N1 Virus Spread 158
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.
How come viruses get all the cool mutations? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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It's because you require more minerals to build that spawning pool and evolution chamber. Just wait till you start using vespene gas, THEN you'll be frustrated with managing your mutations.
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nucleotide beggars can't be polypeptide choosers
Re:How come viruses get all the cool mutations? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, but you do get mutations! In fact, mutations which allow you to defeat H1N1! And not just a single replaced amino acid, no, lots more! Now how does that silly virus look?
When an immune systems B-cell find something it doesn't like, such as a virus, it goes into a feedback loop, mutates itself so that some copies will dislike said virus even more. In the end you have an immune system against which this virus doesn't stand a chance even though it was a completely unknown pathogen hours earlier. And this response will remain intact for years! (see: vaccination) This is called somatic hypermutation [wikipedia.org]. On the downside, somatic means it won't make it into your germ line so your children will have to mutate all on their own again (though IIRC some of the mothers immune system cells make it into the child to help out a bit).
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That is awesome, and you are awesome for posting it.
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Sure, if you feel okay with the idea of being a single damaged cell away from rapid uncontrollable tissue growth... :P
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Sure, if you feel okay with the idea of being a single damaged cell away from rapid uncontrollable tissue growth... :P
You mean like the Hulk right? That would be awesome.
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I suppose America already has enough of that.
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Species??
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Government Genetic Gene Mutation Caused H1N1 (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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...and the "vaccine" was delivered as a retrovirus in many small batches to specific locations such that anyone vaccinated can have their DNA analyzed to determine their origin as of V-Day.
0: Release mutation of the flu for which no one has antibodies.
1: Secretly introduce geo-specific retrovirus as a vaccine.
2: Support the world's governments cataloging of their populous' DNA [wikipedia.org].
3: Sell H1N1 DNA marker geo-database as a way to identify the actual origin of suspected spies to highest bidder.
4: Profit!
As a flu researcher... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [plospathogens.org] 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!
Thank you... (Score:2)
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Quite a few less deaths than seasonal flu, seems to be the consensus. It was a pandemic in that it spread world-wide, but not a very deadly one. In fact, WHO seriously debated not calling it a pandemic to prevent panic, but eventually called it anyway because it met the definition.
This got a lot of press because it was a pandemic, and because it effected children instead of seniors. Didn't actually kill that many people, though.
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...and because it effected children
That is an impressive virus. Does it increase libido or fertility?
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Sieg heil, Herr Grammer!
So I don't proofread my Slashdot comments as well as my journal articles. Does anyone?
To your question - no, flu tends to lower libido, and no one cares about whether you are fertile. Most people can't think about sex when they have a major respiratory viral infection making them feel worse than they have ever felt...
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IN the end, your basically correct. However when it was first discovered it's mortality was 50%.
When something like that breaks loose, you must act immediately. We dodged a bullet.
Also it effect children and pregnant women. Many of are hospitals where out of beds.
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No question, we thought the mortality rate was high(er) when this started, but quoting 50% is silly - it was endemic in rural Mexico for ~2 months before it was recognized in the US. Their health care isn't great, and certainly some people died that didn't need to, but nothing like 50%.
If it had been that high, the Mexican government would have recognized that they had a problem. As was, it wasn't until there were two cases in the US that were identified and characterized that Mexico was forced to acknowl
And something that should be noted (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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lack of a Lysine (K627) in the PB2 gene
As they say, nature will find a way.
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as it tries them all.
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The easier question to answer is why did it have less effect in the elderly.
Flu crosses over from pigs to humans pretty often - there's a fairly well established theory that pigs are the link that lets flu get from birds (the major carrier) into human. This virus was a weird mix of 4 swine viruses (flu has 8 gene segments that can mix and match) that happened to infect both humans and pigs pretty well.
This is not the first time in recent memory that a virus has made the jump from pigs to humans, though. T
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Mostly right - it would be rare for 4 different strains to all infect the same cell, but two is pretty common. Since this virus was a mix of 4 swine viruses, it probably resulted from several dual-infection/random-packaging events (called reassortment, usually).
That SOB! (Score:3, Funny)
Just goes to show you never really know someone.
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I El_Smacked my forehead when I read this. Just palming my face wouldn't be enough.
Time to get off the computer... (Score:2)
Manbirdpig flu? (Score:2)
Heh...
It might be more proper to say (Score:2)
that factory farming, where pigs are crammed close together to cut costs contributed to the gene mutation and spreading of the Swine Flu.
Good info from an expert and geek (Score:2)
http://moremark.squarespace.com/ [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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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.
Re:Still here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Still here? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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Are you by any chance selling tiger-repellent rocks?
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So, your tactic
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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.
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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 develope
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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 y
You miss the point of vaccines (Score:2)
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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 th
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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...
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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
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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.
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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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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 dis
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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.
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I understand from my 80 something year old great grandmother that shingles is painful, but not a killer(you just wish you were dead).
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Re:Pandemic? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Yes, keep getting you info on what women like from Jersey Shore~
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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
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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 cri
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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
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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.
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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 p
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Re:I thought it was unjustified media fearmongerin (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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You are absolutely correct, insofar as anchors are generally made of metal instead of stone.
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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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I've noticed your sig before, but it's especially pertinent with this post!
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Re:I thought it was unjustified media fearmongerin (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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"
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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
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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 everyth
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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 critici
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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.
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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.
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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 neede
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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 wer
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It WAS and IS unjustified media fear mongering. They had everyone expecting another Spanish flu at least
NO ONE expects the Spanish flu!!!
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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?
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No it was not, you moron.
Oh yeah? Well your a DOODIEHEAD so NYAH NYAH NYAH!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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
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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.
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...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.
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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?
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Why do I seriously suspect that this will actually get written into a D&D module now...?!
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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
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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
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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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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 a
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Off topic but still about pandemics (Score:2)
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...
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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 br