Posted on 10/05/2005 11:21:05 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Ho hum.
Women and children hit hardest.......ACK!
A little bird flu never hurt anybody.
Birds typically have a body temperature of 102. When suffering from a virus, their body temp can rise to 107 to fend off the virus.
Humans kill viruses by raising their body temperature to 102 or 103.
A bird-flu would likely survive temperatures of 104-105 which would cause irreparable damage to the human body.
This is the issue... a virus that is human-borne which can survive extreme body temperatures.
...except for the 50,000,000 or so people who died of it back around 1918.
If I get avian flu, I guess there's no point in eating chicken soup to recover.
Aha, that explains why humans have such a hard time dealing with that sort of virus. Thanks for the info.
"Doomed, I tells ya, Doomed!"- Homer Simpson.
I would hope the world is working on producing a vaccine 24 and 7 right now. This is no joking matter to be taken lightly. It should be getting every bit of funding that it needs.
I wish I could get my hands on some of that 1918 stuff. Excellent vintage. The strain I picked up in Phnom Phen last month, that was good, nicely infectious, an assertive joint inflamation, but it lacked the sophisticated bouquet of the legendary 1918 illness. Oh sure, there could be some mutations that make the 2005 Avian into an all time great pandemic, but I'm not optimistic.
Owl_Eagle(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Big Party at the Club of Rome's funhouse tonight.
How does the flu kill? Is it the high fever, fluid in the lungs, or something else?
The bird flue virus has not evolved to a human transmissable form, yet. until that happens, any vaccine developoed today would be specificn against the un-mutated bird virus and not the type that is extremely virulent against humans. Once that mutation has occurred, then vaccine development is possible. You can't create a vaccince for a disease that does not yet exist.
Besides the body temperature issues, do not forget that a newly evolved human-bird flue virus will face no resistnace from the human immune system. Since no human has every been exposed to this virus, the human immune system is unprepared for infection. Other flu viruses that have been around for a while are self-similar enough that a healthy adult will have some immune response to it. THis new bug is just that - new. Survivors will have some immunity to future variations, but not to the initial pandemic.
Could someone explain to a simple old me why recreating a virus that killed tens of thousands of people was a GOOD idea?!?
>>>Could someone explain to a simple old me why recreating a virus that killed tens of thousands of people was a GOOD idea?!?>>>
To see how and why it mutates into a human to human virus from a bird to bird or bird to human virus.
My guess by recreating the virus, they can extract the DNA and use it create vaccines. But just my guess.
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