Its the flu.. Not the plauge.

Yeah.. I may not be a medical expert, but i've had the flu. I wasnt vaxinated, all I took with nyquil and oragne juice to cure it, and the flu isnt going to wipe us clean. I know that the two main targets of disease (Very old and Very young) might be hit hard, but not horribly enough to make us fall to our knees. I aknowladge that the flu can be deadly, but I was 12 when I survived the flu. It wasnt wiping out my family, they didn't burn my house down for fear of spread. The flu is the flu, even if this one is a bit more resiliant.

In short.. Calm down people. If your that worried about the flu, buy some nyquil, turn up the heater and call in sick for a couple days, because it isn't the black death, it isnt ebola, and it isnt aids. Its something that 9 out of 10 people survive, and that pretty much the best odds you can have. (Except 10 out of 10, but lets not jinx it.)

About the only thing the common flu you had has in common with avian flu is the "flu" name.

Two totally different things...this can kill formerly healthy people in a matter of hours.

Indeed dj.

Granted, familiar strains of influenza are simply an inconvenience for those with healthy immune systems. I've had it a few times, and I'm still alive and reasonably healthy.

But if you were unfortunate to catch swine flu or avian flu, you would quickly come to regret your nonchalant attitude. Drowning in snot is comparable to the plague in my estimation. Maybe worse, because drowning is one of the more painful ways of dying. Take it from me, I've drowned more than once.

I actually agree with the poster's main point though. Everyone needs to calm down. Stress will kill you just as surely as the flu. Just takes longer.

Another problem with this over reaction is that the Flu is not nearly as likely to jump from bird to human as the media is saying. From the way they talk, its going to mutate from bird if we touch a dead one, and then spread like wildfire until humanity is gone. People often draw comparisons between this new flu and the spanish one in the 1930s, which is a bad example.

I do belive medical technoligy has gotten past the point of wrapping someone in blankets and leaving them in a sunny room. When the spanish flu spread, they didnt even have the most basic of anti-biotics. Lets face it, we have seen what is inarguably the most advances in the medical field in this past century then all of the others combined.

And my mistake with the flu comparison, though I do have an uncle who lived through swine flu, it might well be a real killer. (My family has iron immune systems.. Not one of us has died from sickness since 1910)

Originally posted by Gunman
I do belive medical technoligy has gotten past the point of wrapping someone in blankets and leaving them in a sunny room. When the spanish flu spread, they didnt even have the most basic of anti-biotics.

Anti-biotics do next to nothing against influenza. Anti-biotics kill bacteria, influenza is caused by viral infection. Unlike bacteria, you can't really "kill" a virus per se (it is actually still debated as to whether or not viruses are actually "living"). And most anti-viral drugs work to treat the symptoms and not to actually cure the disease. Anti-biotics cannot be used against avian flu should a pandemic break out. In fact, that would be the worst thing you could do as it could cause bacteria to develop resistance against anti-bacterial drugs.

UO

I tell you I got the flu on thanksgiving an to this day I still coughing junk and I am not a smoker either and I am medically considered healthy as I can be.

But this season is killing my chest.

The avian flu can kill a healthy child in five days.

And no, its not going to spontaneously jump to humans from birds. But in every infection there are countless replications of the avian flu. Not only is the error rate of mutation incredible in viruses in general - but the genomic difference between the Spanish Flu of 1918 that killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people in a year and today's flu's is 25 to 30 of its ~ 4,400 amino acids.

That's not a lot of mutation.

And human forms of 7 of these 10 amino acid changes have been found circulating in H5N1 (the avian flu virus).

One single amino acid chain has been identified that will change the avian virus into a human virus - it has to do with a binding protein for a alpha 2,6 sialic acid - the major form that is found in the human respiratory track.

One amino acid change.

One.

And it is easy to mutate DNA. Far too easy. That's why our cells spent their entire G2 cycle checking and re-checking their replicated genetic code, and have countless DNA polymerase proteins to circulate through the genome and identify mutations. Yet still, not all are found - that's how many there are. In some cases, after about seven major specific genomic changes, human beings develop cancer.

There's a lot of cancer in this world.

Mutation is easy.

One more change is all this H5N1 needs to easily infect humans.

I hope its a little easier to see now why entire countries are readying to battle avian flu. Sure - it could pass us by, this time. But infections that are not simply human-to-human transmission don't simply disappear. They hang around, infecting animals we don't recognize or diagnose. And the possibility of mutation is a constant truth. I say good for countries stocking up on flu medication and searching for a vaccine - because sooner or later we're going to need it.