Seems to be saying the task of cranking out a man made super virus may be harder than it looks and it may not be as deadly as hoped.
That is an interesting thought.
Baxter: Product contained live bird flu virus
The rebirth of the 1918 Spanish flu, which was a military flu.
Is a bio-terrorist, having possible knowledge of events which may murder literally millions of persons, to have the prescribed “interrogation” of Obama and Holder?
Pelosi and Leahy should be asked about this. It is a perfect moment for the question.
Swine Flu in Mexico - Timeline of Events
http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html
Ping
Using influenza as a bio-weapon makes as much sense as issuing plutonium knives to soldiers for use in combat.
There are plenty of reasons for this. For example, the various influenza have an extraordinarily high number of flexible RNA components, which means it mutates at a tremendous clip. A single animal may have half a dozen strains at the same time.
This also means that the strains are in natural selection competition with each other to develop the best strain to insure strain survival. This means that there is a distinct path for a given strain.
To begin with, a strain must be different enough from previous strains so that its hosts immune system does not recognize it and attack it with a specialized and deadly defense. But by not recognizing it, the host immune system overreacts, which can result in what we now call the “cytokine effect”. Between virus over-reproduction that damages the host and the cytokine effect, this makes the new strain deadly to the host.
However, natural selection then kicks in again, as less lethal variants of the strain survive and propagate better than lethal ones. And this happens rapidly as well, so the strain soon becomes just annoying to the host, not deadly. But by then, so many hosts are innovating deadly defenses against the strain, that other strains are able to fill the gap in the host population.
Influenza also swaps RNA segments readily, helping it to adapt and compete. This is why the Mexican swine flu has human, avian, and European and Asian swine elements, and typical influenza tests showed positive for two different strains.
In short, influenza is vastly too complex, too capable, too flexible, and too unpredictable to use as a bio-weapon. Annual vaccinations are based on guesswork, and even if a lethal strain was devised, there is no assurance it will last beyond the first few hosts.
At the same time, the H5N1 strain being innovated naturally has the potential to kill 1 billion people. Nature is that much better at this than we are.