Flu Theorem

[sfcfinchrs]

Ok......

Let me start off by saying that I am a significantly educated jack of all trades. Does not mean that I am an expert. Yet I wish to say that many times than not my predictions come true.

OK..... so lets get to a subject that I hold high on my threat matrix. The dreaded "Flu".

Now hear me out on this.

Not to long ago, there was a significant scare associated with "Swine Flu". To be honest I was happy to see that our societies were taking this seriously. I had hoped the this would cause a significant shift in awareness. Yet once again I have been disappointed. All that happened is that people tuned out the dangers of the Flu.

Now to the Theorem.......

Swine flu was less of a danger to the human population due to the fact that swine are relatively close to humans biologically. What this means is that a pathogen that develops in swine will not be completely alien the the human immune system. Thus the impact results in less death and easier vaccine development.

Now let us look at the Avian Flu. The Spanish Flu kicked us in the balls big time. Currently as I write this, there are significant outbreaks of Avian Flu in poultry flocks all over the place. The avian biology is significantly different from human biology. So the end result is that once an Avian Based Virus mutates enough to infect humans. Then the SHTF. The reason for this is quite simple. Since the Avian Flu evolved in an Avian Biology, the Human Immune System will be forced to fight something that is completely alien.

I welcome your thoughts.

[Holomon]

I can't take this one on in one post, but the basic answer is that's not how viruses work.

We already had H5N1 and H7N9 which are avian influenza subtypes with crossover to human infection. There's a post I did sometime around when I was last back in the UK and on the forum that explains how flu works in a bit more depth, it might be worth looking at that.
It boils down to it being less about biology and more about genetics. Have a read through this which may help explain things without me spending all night typing

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpag ... -virus-716

[Derv]

Part of the problem with any novel virus or one which has jumped from one species to another is that it hasn't had time to evolve balanced pathogenicity within its new host population.

Think in simple terms, which will have more chance to infect more hosts i.e. reproduce more effectively and pass on its genes, a virus that infects, debilitates and kills its host quickly or one that infects, presents slightly less harsh symptoms (so the host can move around and infect others) and doesn't kill or doesn't kill quickly?

When viruses make the jump between species, within the viral population there will be strains that cause all degrees of symptom severity, eventually those more successful, mentioned above, will be selected for, symptoms will be less harsh and eventually reach balanced pathogenicity with its new population I.e. It will balance its symptoms with the need to pass on genes effectively.

I think rabies (thinking back to uni years ago) had an original population in fruit bats where it caused like a cold - balanced pathogenicity. Relatively recently in evolutionary terms, it jumped species and displays a bit less balanced pathogenicity.

The answer, hunker down for several years and wait for the virus to evolve