Originally posted by soficrow
Originally posted by HowlrunnerIV
The news on Tamiflu has been out for a while, it isn't designed to combat Avian influenza strain H5N1, the governments are telling us that they hope
scientists can use it as a starting point for the vaccine that will kill H5N1.
Odd, that info snippet. Tamiflu isn't even a vaccine - how could it be the 'starting point' for an H5N1 vaccine. Especially when there aleady are
existent H5N1 vaccines?
In any case, H5N1 will not be the super flu, but a new strain mutated from it, most probably a combination of birdflu and swine flu. H5N1 bird flu
can, so far, only be transmitted human-to-human by contact with blood. Swine flue is a little different and therefore nastier. It just isn't as
deadly.
H5N1 does not require species specific genetic components. Other flus normally reassort with swine flu, but H5N1 does not need to go through
that process.
Don't know where you get your info about blood - any references? My research shows that even feathers are considered a vector - and that the dominant
route of transmission is respiratory.
H5N1 is passed from bird to human through dired and powdered faeces being inhaled, which is why the primary victims have been poultry farmers.
You can cook and eat the dead chooks and have no ill effects.
The only case of human to human transmission in Thailand was of a woman who contracted the disease after her daughter died in her arms coughing blood.
The woman had had no contact with poultry, the daughter had.
Feathers???
H5N1 certainly does need to go through a recombination process before it can be passed human to human.
If H5N1 could be passed human to human we'd already be dead.
Perhaps vaccine is the wrong medical term. I'm not a doctor and tend to use the wrong terms for the wrong ilnesses and medications, ie virus/bacteria
and vaccine/whatever.
Either way, the governments are telling us they hope Tamiflu can be the starting point of a bird-flu specific drug.
If there was already an H5N1 vaccine out there why isn't it being distributed?
