H1N1 cannot be a new virus

Like most of I too have been following these reports...
Now where I live... just like they said it would... it targets young adults.... Where I live the youngest victim is 14 the oldest 27. leaving another dozen cases evenly spread between 19 20 22, 23 year olds...

Now I have no proof but reason dictates that 30+ years ago H1N1 had to have gone around otherwise we older folks would be getting it too. well maybe not H1N1 itself, but an early variant that give us some immunity...

I know in other places there are older people who have come down with it but the numbers are so small as to be anomalous.

If that truly is the case then one can assume either a mostly harmless virus has turned rogue or someone tweaked that harmless virus and made it worse... don't kid yourselves companies tweak viruses all the time and not to long ago there was a story of do it at home bio engineering done in basements and garages... just a few months ago we debated what would happen if someone changed a harmless virus...

I'm starting to think the odds are pretty damn good that's what were seeing here

Excerpt from Ap story from DEC 2008 to jog your memorries

The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly.

"People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process," she said.

So far, no major gene-splicing discoveries have come out anybody's kitchen or garage.

But critics of the movement worry that these amateurs could one day unleash an environmental or medical disaster. Defenders say the future Bill Gates of biotech could be developing a cure for cancer in the garage.

Just maybe it wasnt a cure they did find???

A victim from Mexico that was in Texas was just a baby. So much for your theory.

feww.wordpress.com...

[edit on 5/4/2009 by Blueracer]

Originally posted by Blueracer
A victim from Mexico that was in Texas was just a baby. So much for your theory.

Not at all that was a clear case of his parents poor care of a sick child... the little guy had a high fever chills the whole works... and what did they do? rush him off to the doctors for treatment? Heck no they took the kid to a mall and went shopping... sorry his case doesn't fit... and is discounted due to lack of basic care

[edit on 4-5-2009 by DaddyBare]

reply to post by DaddyBare


But you said the virus targets young adults. That, obviously, is not the case here.

These researchers agree with you.

They contend that this is the Spanish Flu. Farm workers gave it to pigs. Its been mutating with pigs since then, and has re-emerged into the human population.

www.cbc.ca...Sw ine flu roots traced to Spanish flu

reply to post by Blueracer


Mostly yes we're not seeing many reports of young children coming down with it... we had an early report of a 1 year old they thought had it testing found he didn't. his mother might have but he would have got some antibodies from her breast milk anyway... no here at least the numbers and recorded ages bare me out... I'm not saying a child couldn't get it but kids these days are given immunizations we older folks never got... the gap would mean that a good number of us over 30 have been exposed to some version while those under have not

Originally posted by Blueracer
reply to post by DaddyBare

 

But you said the virus targets young adults. That, obviously, is not the case here.

It is more likely to kill adults between 25-40.

That doesn't mean it WILL NOT kill others.

What do you think mutations do? Just give it a new name?

It changes the whole genetic makeup of the virus, and one of the traits that could be affected is the range of the target population. Just like how mutations can change the symptoms of the virus.

So it's actually not surprising that it reacts with the immune system differently.

You do know that the reason young people are dying more is because it's not the virus making people SO sick and dying, it's the body's immune reaction to the virus.

So if someone has a stronger immune system, like most people between say 18 and 40, they actually get more sick because their immune system is fighting the virus harder.

That sort of thing can absolutely develop as a trait in the virus from a mutation.

reply to post by ravenshadow13


But like I said here at least we have no, not even suspected cases of H1N1 in anyone over 30... if it was a general infection then the numbers should be evenly spread out among all age groups.

Originally posted by DaddyBare
reply to post by ravenshadow13

 

But like I said here at least we have no, not even suspected cases of H1N1 in anyone over 30... if it was a general infection then the numbers should be evenly spread out among all age groups.

There have been a number of people who are adults who've had it outside Mexico.

Originally posted by DaddyBare
reply to post by ravenshadow13

 

But like I said here at least we have no, not even suspected cases of H1N1 in anyone over 30... if it was a general infection then the numbers should be evenly spread out among all age groups.

There have been a number of people who are adults who've had it outside Mexico.

reply to post by DaddyBare


It's funny because that's a lie. In Mexico the oldest confirmed case is I think 39 and here in my state I know at least one person was over 40 and confirmed.

So...



Have some sources
abcnews.go.com...
www.wnct.com...

Check that last one. 10% 50-64.

[edit on 5/4/2009 by ravenshadow13]

Turns out I was right and didn't even know it... until now that is...

The 1975 Swine Flu debacle
By Grattan Woodson, MD, FACP
The consequences to bureaucrats who needlessly warn the public about flu pandemics that fail to occur are seared into the US CDC’s institutional memory. In 1975 an American solder stationed in US died of influenza and an evaluation proved the organism responsible was H1N1 Swine Flu, a strain that was similar to the one that caused of the infamous 1918 Spanish Influenza that killed 80 million people worldwide.

CDC experts predicted a severe pandemic was possible and put on a big push to vaccinate the nation. At that time there were over 20 licensed influenza vaccine manufacturers in the US so it was relatively easy for them to significantly up production from their usual order of about 50 million doses to 150 million. President Ford put his prestige behind the vaccination campaign by inviting TV cameras into the oval office so the nation could watch him get his shot. Speeches and public service announces were made imploring one and all to get a flu shot.

Source

So it would seem those of us around and kicking back in 1975 would have either been exposed to H1N1 or been given the flu shoot for it... The few older folks who are getting this probably never got it or the shoot.

H1N1 is not new. This one has a lot of similarities of the 1918 Flu as well as the 1976 Fort Dix flu. It's not exactly the same of course .. but they are all related.


Quotes from "The Coming Plague"
By Laurie Garrett (written in 1994)

Chapter Six ... Swine Flu

A hallmark of the great 1918-10 influenza pandemic was the virus's ability to kill young adults and children. ....

The influenza virus was otherwise well protected by a tough protein-and-fat armor made of two layer sof viral enveloping: one layer was almost entirely composed of the human heart's nemesis, cholesterol. ....

The virus (1918 Flu) appears to have swept the world in three waves, over less than two years time, gaining virelence with each new assault.....

The appearance of the Fort Dix virus, dubbed A/Newjersey/H1N1 caused consideralbe anxiety inside the U.S. Public Health Service. "By every available scientific measure, the Shope strain was indistinushable from the 1918 strain, and also indisinguishable from the Fort Dix strain." ...

... influenza viruses unusually rich in neuraminidase proteins were more easily spread from person to person. ...

Several scientists argued that swine strains, in particular, appeared in 90-100 year cycles ...

... there had been a long spring-to-summer silence (of the flu) following the first flu outbreaks of 1918 - a silence that was followed in September by the greatest pandemic of the early twentieth century. "To decide not to do something, to decide to go on pause because the virus went on pause, " Osborn argued in long conference alls to fellow scientists, "would be utterly irresponsible." ....

Swine influenzas, Cox would later explain, were particularly worrisome because peigs were highly permissive hosts, capable of harboring influenzas froma wide range of animals, birds, and humans. Inside the swine, variuos influenza strains shared genes, and recombined, resulting in major antigen shifts. ...

Stated as certainties, rather than hypothetical conjectures, were the following points listed under the memo's heading "FACTS" : The virus found at Fort Dix is 'antigenically related to the influenza virus which has been implicated as the cause of the 1918-19 pandemic which killed 450,000 American people; every American undre the age of fifty 'is probably susceptible to this new strain"; severe flu epidemics occur at approximately ten year intervals." ....

... (1918) influenza deaths were usually produced not by the virus but secondarily by bacterial infections that took advantage of the weakened immune defenses of influenza-infected lunchs. Bacterial penumonia ...

... a minimum of 85 percent of high-risk populations would have to be vaccinated to ensure society's protection against an analogous epidemic ....

This flu has been around, in 1918. This is the spanish flu. However we had to dig someone up to get the virus back. Its been dead and gone for a long time.

reply to post by FlyersFan


Flyers, you warm my heart by quoting Garrett. THIS strain of H1N1 has been in circulation since '05 (a type) and there is a B type, as well, that is resistant to anti-virals. Guess who got it first? A child on a pig farm in Wisconsin. It travelled the world, picked up RNA from infectees, and re-emerged as the strain we now face. H3N2 has a similar story.

It's not a new virus, just a variation on a theme, as it were....

reply to post by Memysabu


Yup- and when researchers dug a woman from the ice, sequenced the virus of 1918 and put it in a lab- guess what? Viruses can get up and walk away- in a tiny Eppendorf tube, a 3 mL sample at -20F can become the scourge of the modern age. We also posted the entire sequence for the public, so anyone with a will and a good bioreactor could play havoc with it. I don't know about you, but as a scientist, it seems like pretty irresponsible science. I've had my hands on things that I could have tucked in a pocket and sold for millions- how many people are moral enough to resist that temptation? Nature or "nurture"- I think we should have let sleeping dogs lie on this one, IMHO- no matter the drive for inquiry...

[edit on 12-5-2009 by CultureD]

reply to post by FlyersFan


Sorry to go on about this one- but who the he** decided Spanish Flu was an appropriate name for the 1918 bug? How about Ft. Dix flu? The Spanish weren't even FIGHTING during the outbreak. We developed the virus here- overcrowding, genetic drift- whatever- sent our guys to Europe and killed 50-100M people in under 3 years. I get crazy mad when I read "Spanish Flu" as a description for the '18 bug. We gave it to Europe- not the other way around.