Indeed, it's odd. I've been hearing a number of odd things about this H1N1 virus, though I don't know for a fact whether they're true.
For instance, on Fox News today, I heard that this strain is a composite of eight "layers" — one of bird flu; three of swine flu; and the rest, "standard" human flu (i.e., the typical seasonal flu that humans ordinarily get; the human flu component helps to boost human-to-human transmissibility). So I wonder: Is this flu a "natural" occurrence, or is it a product of human design?
A reason for wondering about that: My husband told me he recalled reading an article sometime within the past few months — as he recalled, in the Washington Post or Washington Times (???), but he doesn't specifically remember — that reported certain biotoxins "went missing" from the Army's biological weapons research lab at Fort Dietrich, Maryland sometime earlier this year or late last year. To the best of his recollection, H1N1 was one of the missing agents.
So hubby tried to retrieve the article yesterday, but it seems it has "gone missing," too.
Anyhoot, I don't know whether this information is correct. But it seems clear there's a lot that's "unusual" about this flu strain, in particular something that you noted, Jim Noble: That the anticipated most impacted population is not the very young or the very old (as is typical with a "normal" human flu), but people in the middle decades of life — the 25–45 band.
Though this might be nothing but "tin-foil hat" material, it raises interesting questions.
Can anyone out there reading this provide further information?
The 1918 pandemic was the same thing, killing those in the prime of their life. I think it has something to do with the strong immune system in those middle years. IIRC, the immune system itself is what kills the person, as it aggresively goes after the virus.
“Can anyone out there reading this provide further information?”
There is human flu, bird flu, swine flu. Pigs are good incubators of both swine flu, and human flu. If a pig contracts a swine flu and a human flu at the same time, the RNA of both can combine and remix, creating a “new flu”. The flu virus mutates very quickly, and with RNA from both pigs and humans, each mutation has a chance of being easily transmitted to humans.
The same is true of birds and humans. At some point in the evolution of this particular virus, a bird flu, a human flu and a swine flu were all recombined. This RNA combination contains parts of bird, swine and human flu, and allows for easy transmission between humans. (the human flu is usually very contagious)
I think the statistical odds against this type of combination are pretty high, though clearly not impossible. Keep in mind that the bird flu was isolated to birds, but in a few cases it was transferred to humans. The epidemic producting combination of human flu and bird flu has yet to materialize, even though they have worried about it for years.
While there might be a slight possibility that this flu was “designed”,I doubt it. The quick and numerous mutations in any flu virus create the potential for a pandemic flu at any time. We spend a lot of effort trying to prevent it, because the flu is so dangerous. (30,000 - 50,000 deaths a year) Pandemics cannot be entirely prevented no matter how hard we try. Fortunately, we can prevent some of them, so we don’t have pandemics very often.