Some of the stuff here is of some comfort ("most people today have antibodies to H1N1") and some of the stuff is terrifying (um, "Scientists Resurrect Deadly Flu Virus" for example).
I hope they get “it”.......mess with the bull, you get the horns.
CDC has probably been told to have it ready in case Obama’s poll numbers tank.
Well I hope that they’ve learned a thing or two about it in the past three years. I’m read some pretty alarming breaking-news stuff in the past hour or so on some dubious websites.
Sorry about the crosspost. I added this to a previous thread, but it’s more applicable to this one.
The influenza epidemic of 1916-18 was pretty fascinating. Though I’m certainly not old enough to have been around, my grandfather was (a doctor in a small town in SE Nebraska). He remembered it vividly. It was not uncommon to find people dead, in the ditches along the road, as they were walking into town.
The course of the disease was usually quite rapid, and it didn’t take the old and the young, like you might think. It killed those in the prime of their lives (late teens to thirties). How was that possible? It’s conjectured that a robustly active antibody system was what killed the military aged folks that got hit the hardest. Their system overreacted, in effect. When you’re very young, your immune system is not fully developed, and thus tempers your response to the virus. The same goes for geezers, such as myself. My system is on the way out and is spooling down as my “galloping senescence” has its way with me. The recruits in places like Ft. Reilly literally suffocated when their lungs rapidly filled with fluids as their system reacted to the disease.
Some medical types, figure that a similar strain went through the population a year or so before, setting up folks immune system to go hog wild (sorry) when exposed to a slightly different bug. It’s all guesses, but still fascinating stuff. It really did kill a bazillion folks when it happened, and I ‘spect it could do it again. At least the folks at CDC seem to have the same uneasiness about what seems to be approaching us.
Whether it’s H1N1, or H5N1, if the virus is lined up the proper way, it’ll carve another path. Might not kill as many, but on the other hand, it might kill worser!